One of our most popular posts ever had to do with the Standard Poodle as a hunting retriever, and it was accompanied by photos taken at the Central Carolina Poodle Club Hunt Test weekend show. Even before the first Poodle was ever registered with the AKC, the breed is believed to have been in America for some time as a hunting dog.

In the “American Book of the Dog,” W.R. Furness wrote with high regard of the extraordinary power that Poodles had in water,  and he went on to write that the Poodle “excels all his race in that element, at least, being able to distance the strongest water spaniel and swim round and round a Newfoundland.”  We think this comparison is a bit of “apples and oranges” because while both are good water dogs, each has a different strength in it.  Nevertheless, we love to remind readers that Poodles are retrievers, and that more and more clubs are offering retriever and water tests for the breed.

As for the show ring, in that arena, too, Poodles had been exhibited for several years before the first Poodle was registered with the AKC (that first registered Poodle being a black Standard named “Czar” who’d been imported by W. Lyman Biddle of Philadelphia).  To our knowledge, the first instance of a show in which Poodles were exhibited occurred in 1878 when eight Poodles formed a class at a Boston dog show.

Image of Mrs. L. W. Crouch with a group of Poodles circa 1911 found via Wikicommons