Pointer Families 37 



bench. He is a handsome liver-and-white heavy- 

 weight dog of great style and symmetry. In his 

 younger days when I saw him, some of the judges 

 called him a little leggy, but he probably filled 

 out afterward. He was owned by Major A. J. 

 Ross of Dallas, Texas, and travelled on the bench 

 until he came into the possession of Messrs. Lewis 

 and Payne of Pennsylvania. In competition at 

 the St. Louis show of 1899, he was beaten by the 

 New York dog. Sir Walter, but I thought he suf- 

 fered a little the worst of it through judicial over- 

 conscientiousness. The judge was a personal 

 friend of Major Ross and seemed to lean too 

 much on the side of scrupulousness. At that time, 

 whatever Sir Walter may before have been, he was 

 not the equal of Dot, as he had become throaty and 

 loose, while Dot was in the pink of condition. 



Without attracting any great amount of atten- 

 tion or exciting any heated debate, the modern 

 pointers, even on the bench, seem to have made 

 a racial change and become short-headed in com- 

 parison with the old-time champions. It is rare 

 now to see a pointer as clean and long in the 

 head as were most of the winners twenty years 

 ago. Of course, at no time was a pointer ex- 

 pected to have the long, lean setter head, though 

 there was a day when the best specimens on the 

 bench had cleaner and more shapely heads than 

 are now usual The change has probably come 



