The Pointer - A Dog Anthology (A Vintage Dog Books Breed Classic)

THE POINTER.

ALTHOUGH the Pointer is of comparatively recent introduction into this country—comparatively alongside his fellow worker the setter—no animal is more popular with the shooter. Originally said to come from Spain, a country to which we are indebted for other dogs, Sydenham Edwards, writing in 1805, says it was first introduced by a merchant trading with Portugal, at a very modern period, and was then used by an old reduced baron, named Bechill, who lived in Norfolk, and who could shoot flying. The same writer eulogises this Spanish pointer, and so good a dog was he, and required so little training that there was quite a chance of his putting the nose of the setting spaniel out of joint altogether. Shooting flying came into vogue about the year 1730; and this may be taken to be about the date of the introduction of the pointer into England.

Probably, France had pointers before this time. One of our modern writers falls into a curious error with regard to a picture by Francis Desportes. The artist depicts two dogs, which the author says are examples of the early foxhound and pointer cross in France, of the date about 1701. As a fact, the picture is a portrait of two favourite hounds from the pack of Louis XV., Pompée and Floressant, and was painted in 1739. There is no mistaking the hound character of these dogs, and they display no trace, so far as I can make out, of any pointer appearance whatever. The pheasant and two other birds in the background are merely accessories to the picture, and are not put there to indicate that the dogs below them are of a game finding variety. However, there is extant another drawing by the same artist, of a pointer and two setters, with partridges in front of them, the smooth-coated dog being quite of modern type, but with his stern shortened.

By the means of that fine old picture, The Spanish Pointer, by Stubbs, and which was engraved by Woollett in 1768, we know what kind of a dog it was: liver and white in colour, heavily and massively made, big of head, double nosed, strong loined, shortened stern; a cumbrous dog, steady enough, no doubt, but as unlike our modern pointer as a Suffolk punch is unlike a thoroughbred racehorse. To one of the London dog shows, I think it was in 1891, Mr. Walter Gilbey, of Norfolk, sent up a brace of Spanish pointers. These were short, thick set, small dogs, fawn, rather than lemon and white in colour, doubled nosed, with short stumpy heads—very ugly animals indeed, and, however staunch and steady they might be on game, they would certainly be sadly deficient in pace, and of no use in competition against the high rangers we at present own. Nor could these Spanish pointers of Mr. Gilbey’s compare with the one Stubbs had, over a hundred years before, given us upon canvas. As a fact, they were short and thick enough in head, and sufficiently heavy in under-jaw, to give indications of a bulldog cross. Still, they were pure bred animals so far as they went.

Good as the old Spanish pointer had been, our English sportsmen required something better. The old strain tired much, and became slow at the end of a day’s heavy work; and indeed, it lacked perseverance generally. So, it was said, a cross was resorted to. History tells us this was found with the foxhound, and that the celebrated Colonel Thornton, of Yorkshire, was the first man to bring the improved dog prominently to the notice of the public. This might be so or not, we fancy not; for, about the same period, pointers, far removed from the imported Spanish dog in appearance, were not at all uncommon in England, and they could easily have been brought over from France. In any case, if the gallant Colonel was not actually the maker of the modern English pointer, he had the credit of being so, and, sportsman as he was, contrived to get big prices for some of his dogs, and obtain a reputation for them as being the best in England.

It was said that two bred by him, Pluto and Juno, remained on point during the whole of the time Sidney Gilpin, the animal painter, was taking a sketch for their portraits, and this occupied about an hour and a quarter. This was not, however, a sufficiently extraordinary feat for his dogs, one of which, the gallant Colonel stated, had stood on point for five hours at a stretch, and was even then loth to move in and spring the game! Such a story as the latter does not require much further exaggeration to suggest others, like that dog frozen to death whilst on point; or its cousin, where a sportsman lost his dog (it was not on an Irish mountain), and on going over the same ground twelve months later found the skeleton of his old favourite still standing with one foot raised and on point, whilst six yards away lay the bones of two brace and a half of partridges, the feathers of the birds having long before been blown to the four winds of the heavens. Surely, then, there are grounds for the truth of the north country expression, Shutters is leears, although this may be qualified by the usual addendum but fishers, by gum!

The jovial colonel is said to have had an Eclipse of pointers in his dog called Dash, which was the produce of a foxhound and a Spanish pointer. Dash could beat all other dogs, he never omitted to find birds in front of him, and his extraordinary intuition enabled him to do this without quartering his ground as other dogs did. Moreover, Dash was as steady and staunch behind in backing other dogs as needs be. We are not told how so extraordinary an animal could so far be outstripped by some sorry quarterer of his ground as to be in so backward a position as to have to back. The fact of the matter is, that these extraordinarily fast dogs are never good backers because they have not the opportunity of being made so; and they can scarcely be perfection as such naturally and without some training. Dash sustained his reputation to the end, for he was sold by his breeder to Sir Richard Symons for champagne and burgundy to the value of £160, a hogshead of claret, an elegant gun, and another dog. There was a proviso that should accident befal this canine wonder he must be returned to his former owner for fifty guineas. This was brought about by the unfortunate Dash breaking one of his legs.

At the close of the past century, and about the beginning of the present one, the pointers were pretty similar in colour to what they are now—brown, or liver and white, lemon and orange, and white; some heavily flecked or ticked with these colours on a white ground, others black; and no doubt there would be pure browns or livers, as there are occasionally now, though we do not read of them. Sometimes we see pointers with white ticks or flecks on a brown ground, and they, though odd, are by no means unsightly. About ninety years ago the Earl of Lauderdale had a strain of very small pointers that would be little more than 30lb. in weight; they bore a reputation for excelling in their work, but were generally considered too diminutive to be so useful as the bigger dogs as we have them now. They were, however, a novelty, and were likely enough introduced from France, where, about that time, a small and lightly made pointer was quite common.

Earlier than this the Duke of Kingston owned a celebrated strain of black pointers; but they, not being so easy to see when in work as a white dog or one nearly white, the colour never became popular. Still a superstition remains to this day, in some parts of the country, that the black pointers are the best to kill game over, because such have the better noses and the more stamina, and birds lie better to a black dog than to a white one. The latter idea prevails in a somewhat similar way as to wild animals—foxes, otters, &c.—bolting better to a white terrier than to a coloured one; but whether there is anything in such a statement we cannot give an opinion, though our experience is by no means a small one in the matter of foxes and otters.

Before entering on to the show period of the pointer and the introduction of field trial competitions, he was, no doubt, more used to the gun than he has been since. Shooting surroundings have been much changed during the past thirty or forty years. Battues and artificial breeding of game have been introduced on a large scale; improved agriculture and general cultivation have further altered matters; so have the close cropping of the land, the use of machines for mowing and reaping, and increased drainage. Under the old system the stubbles remained as high as a pair of shooting boots, the after grass required dogs to work it, rents were lower, and the farmer could afford to have a rushy pasture or two on his land, which, being ill-drained, grew coarse bent grass, that afforded lovely shelter for the birds. I am writing of inland shooting now, and not of the moors. One thing with another and the old system is changed. On some of the best partridge land in England, and so in the world, birds are not usually killed over dogs; they are either walked up by the shooters moving on in a row, or driven where the sportsmen take their stands or their seats and wait until accumulated coveys of partridges fly within gunshot.

Still, the old style is the best, and nothing prettier in the way of sport is there than walking behind a brace of well-trained pointers, either through turnips or over rough land, and killing your birds as your dogs find them, first one dog and then the other, quartering right and left, crossing correctly, and backing as occasion requires. To kill driven birds may require a smart shot, to kill them when walking in a line may require nerve and steadiness; but to kill them over dogs, you acquire some knowledge of the habits of the game you are after, and, moreover, are proud in the possession of a brace of animals which, without prejudice, you may believe to be the best in the universe.

All things in this world pretty much find their level; may be, had such not been the case, the race of the pointer would have died out when he came to be so little used, through what some are pleased to call modern improvements in the way of sport. But the introduction of dog shows gave him a fillip, and the establishment of field trials raised his