For the sake of clarity, we start our post by narrowing down our topic. Generally speaking, gun dogs are divided into three categories: Pointing breeds, Retriever breeds, and Flushing spaniels. They all have the ability to retrieve anything one throws or shoots down, but the focus of this post is the retriever, a dog bred to retrieve birds and prey as he returns them to the hunter without damage.
As ubiquitous as the Labrador Retriever is, it’s hard to believe now that in 1927, there were only twenty-three retrievers registered with the AKC, and that included all of them: Labs, Golden Retrievers, Chesapeake Bay Retrievers, Flat-Coats, and Curly-Coats. The first Lab had been registered only ten years before, but nearly forty years before the Lab was recognized, the Chesapeake Bay Ducking Dog (known today as the Chesapeake Bay Retriever) was recognized by the AKC becoming the first retriever of any breed to be so honored. It was a full fifty years after that first retriever was admitted into the AKC family that the Golden Retriever was recognized by the American Kennel Club as a registered breed.
The Golden was the last retriever admitted to the registry before a 78 year lull befell retriever breeds in terms of breed recognition, and that dry spell was broken in 2003 when the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever was welcomed into the AKC family. We were going on eighteen years without a new retriever breed being added, but that changed in 2020 when one of the oldest of them all was added, the Barbet. Will we have to go that long before another is added? Is that all there is for retrievers?
Probably not. While there are sporting breeds waiting in the wings of the AKC’s miscellaneous and FSS groups, they are not retrievers to our knowledge. The Deutscher Wachtelhund is an upland bird flusher and is also known as the German Spaniel. The Drentsche Patrijshond is a continental pointer, and the French Spaniel, German Longhaired Pointer, Pudelpointer,Portuguese Pointer, and Slovakian Wirehaired Pointer are described by their very names.
That said, there are retriever breeds recognized elsewhere in the world that one day may join the AKC. Both the Small Munsterlander and Large Munsterlander are versatile hunting dogs and natural retrievers, and depending upon the source, the Frisian Water Dog, or Wetterhoun, is a strong water retriever (though some maintain that the breed is more of a spaniel). There is also the Murray River Curly Coat Retriever, a rare breed developed in Australia over a hundred years ago, and one that is finally starting to get its “props” in that country.
There is one more retriever breed out there, one that is very well known to all of us, but that in our view, has been mis-categorized for the show ring. Can you guess what that breed is?
It’s the Poodle, and that dog can hunt.
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