Pop Quiz!
A “water rug” is:
1) Carpeting while housebreaking a puppy;
2) A Puli after a bath;
3) A collection of towels at a dock diving event
4) A rough coated hound once used to hunt aquatic quarry
Ding ding ding if you answered “a rough coated hound once used to hunt aquatic quarry.”
In early English, “water rug” was a label for a rough‑coated water dog, including old English water spaniels and water dogs that worked in cold, weedy water fetching birds. Cynologists and dog historians used the word as a sort of “period nickname” for shaggy water dogs whose descendants and close relatives include the English and Irish Water Spaniels, the Curly‑Coated Retriever, the American Water Spaniel, and various continental water‑dog breeds.
If we were to provide a timeline, it would probably start in the Renaissance and the famous Dr. John Caius. While his De Canibus Britannicis written in 1570 was not the first time dogs were grouped or distinguished into types in history, it is generally regarded as the first systematic classification of British dogs into named kinds, such as scent‑hounds, sight‑hounds, fowlers, lapdogs, etc., Between the 1590s and 1606, Shakespeare reinforced this type of categorization when his play, Two Gentlemen of Verona mentioned a “water‑spaniel,” and Macbeth listed “water‑rugs” among dog kinds.
By 1790, A General History of Quadrupeds by Thomas Bewick included woodcuts and text for a “large rough water dog” and “large water‑spaniel,” that were described as powerful, shaggy dogs that dove and retrieved shot waterfowl, a description that modern dog historians treat as the direct continuation of the older water‑rug types. Sporting manuals and breed books of the 18th and 19th centuries described the English Water Spaniel, for example, as a “water‑rug,” while at the same time teasing out different water‑dog lines that would become named breeds.
In the 20th century the English Water Spaniel was generally reported to be extinct by the mid‑1900s, but breed historians could still trace its influence on modern retrievers and water spaniels, and specifically on an affinity for water, and two main coat styles: A tight, close curl that sheds water and avoids drag in swimming is characteristic of several curly retriever type breeds, while a harsher, rough coat that traps insulating air protects the skin in cold, brackish, reed‑choked water. We know from estate working accounts that without such coats, these dogs would quickly chill and be cut up by reeds and ice encountered in estuaries and marshes. The Irish Water Spaniel shares the same water‑spaniel role and curly coat as the old English Water Spaniel, though the exact degree of English Water Spaniel input is debated. Curly‑Coated Retriever histories also hint that the Curly descends from the old close‑curled English water dog and old water‑spaniel stock, with additional input from St. John’s water dogs and possibly Irish Water Spaniels and Poodles; by the mid‑19th century Curlies were widespread on British estates as premier water retrievers. Not to be forgotten is the American Water Spaniel that likely included water spaniels and was fixed to type by the later 19th century.
Beyond Britain and North America, David Hancock and other breed historians group continental water dogs such as the French Barbet, Portuguese Water Dog, Wetterhoun, Spanish Water Dog, and the old St. John’s/Newfoundland family as parallel members of the ancient water‑dog complex, performing similar work from boats and in coastal waters even though they never carried the specific English label “water‑rug.” Frank Jackson’s Encyclopedia of Dog Terms also mentions that the English Water Spaniel was probably a forerunner of the Otterhound.
So when modern dog encyclopedias define a “water rug” as a rough‑coated hound once used on aquatic quarry, they are echoing historical usage – a loose but well‑documented category of British rough water dogs, described from Caius in 1570 through Shakespeare and Bewick into 18th–19th‑century sporting literature, which later diversified into named breeds while the original English water‑rug/English Water Spaniel type itself faded out in the early 20th century, leaving its genetic and working legacy in today’s water‑retriever and water‑spaniel breeds.
But a wet Puli is also a water rug. Just saying.
Photo by Benjamin Lehman