336 The Dog Book 
ears.” As each of these independent delineators of the Dalmatian shows 
this tanned eye mark, and two of them the black ear—Reinagle shows a 
dark rim to the outer edge of the ear and a largish splash close behind, 
so that the ear was undoubtedly black in its entirety—it is simply one of 
the oddities of “fancy” for present-day exhibitors to say the Dalmatian 
must not have black ears, and must have no liver or tan if black spotted. 
Fully half of the show Dalmatians, notwithstanding the efforts of thirty 
years’ breeding to get rid-of the black ears, still have them, and when you 
do get a dog with spotted ears he is usually lightly spotted over the body. 
A very good spotted dog in body is seldom near right in ear, and, if we 
must speak our mind, we see no objection to a black ear. It is-as old as 
the hills with the breed, and why now assert that it is wrong? We really 
must say that we have very little patience with some of these modern im- 
provements, and when we see dogs that would tire at the end of a mile or 
two, owing to their faulty conformation, getting places ovér true-made 
dogs because of a little advantage in spotting, we get very tired of the fads 
of fancy. 
~The Dalmatian is primarily a dog that should be able to run all day 
long, and that not over springy pasture land but on hard roads and paved 
thoroughfares; therefore he should be as nearly perfect in legs, feet, shoulders 
and running symmetry as possible. Then, when you have got a dog that 
can run, the spots should count, but not the spotting first. Take that dog 
of Reinagle’s; how many of our present-day winners could he not beat, 
“one down, t’other come on,” following a coach on an all-day run? Spot-: 
ting is all well enough if we are merely to consider the Dalmatian as a 
dog about the premises, as we do a mastiff or St. Bernard, but the moment 
we undertake to judge him as a coach dog then the principal requirement 
is the conformation that will enable him to run as a coach dog is supposed 
to do. Really it is a very difficult thing to do justice in a Dalmatian class, 
or at least to give satisfaction, for if it is a judge who goes for spotting 
because it is easier than conformation plus spotting, the owner of a well- 
made dog feels aggrieved, and, vice versa, the man who must have a dog 
that can run has a disgruntled exhibitor in the owner of the bad-shouldered, 
nicely marked dog who has won a whole lot of prizes elsewhere. It is 
really one of those breeds where the judge should practice the art of self- 
defence and resort to point judging; then if he does not put the dog satis- 
factorily it is the dog’s fault and not his. 
