Emmanuel Boulet was family-money-rich, and because he was rich, he was able to indulge his passion for outdoor life and breeding gun dogs. Unlike Eduard Korthals (his contemporary), Boulet didn’t want so much to create a new gun dog breed as to save and improve on an old one, the French Longhaired Pointing Griffon. He got several dogs from a man who’d kept a line of them, and after a bumpy start, managed to breed with consistency dogs he called “Boulet Griffons.” They were close-working dogs with excellent noses and a firm point, and they were quite successful in field trials and dog shows.

Boulet was heralded by the press and congratulated by his peers.

A few decades Boulet’s death in 1897, the breed faded into oblivion even though a few breeders tried to carry on his breeding program. Just after WWII, the breed was entirely gone and is now extinct. The FCI continued to publish the breed standard, but in 1984, it dropped the Boulet Griffon from its list of recognized breeds. Someone named Philippe Seguela tried to recreate the Boulet and came quite close to the original, but in the early 1990s, Seguela abandoned the project.

So what happened? One source suggests that Boulet had a change in heart after deciding that his dogs were too long coated and soft haired. Who really knows. All that’s left now of the Boulet Griffon are the dusty remains of “Marco,” the first Boulet ever entered into the French stud book, his stuffed body is stored at the Municipal Museum of Natural History in Elbeuf, France (see image)

Extinction is forever, and we must be ever vigilant against poorly thought out legislation impacting heritage breeders.