If you have a Golden Retriever, a Curly Coated Retriever, or Flat-Coated Retriever, your dog carries the DNA of an ancestor we don’t see anymore, the English Water Spaniel. Why don’t we see these dogs anymore? Because extinct is forever, and the breed vanished by 1890. This should be especially sobering to Curly people because their breed is listed on the Kennel Club’s Vulnerable Breeds list, breeds native to the UK that have fewer than 300 registrations a year. In 2016, 83 Curly Coated Retrievers were registered in the land of the breed’s birth, and over the long haul, this isn’t enough to sustain a breed. But we digress.

Why the English Water Spaniel (alternately called the “Fynder” or simply “water spaniel”) went extinct is hard to say, though it’s likely that it was eclipsed by its descendants, the aforementioned breeds. More’s the pity for this was a dog described as “elegant, its hair beautifully curled or crisped, its ear long, and its aspect mild and sagacious.”  It was valued for its prowess in water, its faithful obedience, and its biddability, qualities it certainly passed on the Golden Retriever via the Tweed Spaniel, a close relative of the EWS, and also now extinct.

Some might say that the breed deserved to go extinct if it wasn’t very useful, but as we see it, a breed’s popularity ebbs and flows over generations. To put it in terms of furniture, a plastic chair is durable, inexpensive, and washable, and yet we put great value on a period piece, say, a Chippendale, because it represents quality, craftsmanship, and a time when people valued both. Could not the same be said of a dog breed?

Image: “Golden Retriever Senior” by LA Shepard/thedoglover
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