Posted: 10/3/2004 7:38:49 PM EDT
[#14]
Dupe. NRA ON KERRY IBTL +1 HEY NOW! Poodles are decended from water spaniels. They have hunting in the blood. Poodles and their "water-dog" cousins are the original versatile hunting dogs. Water-dogs predate the use of firearms in waterfowling; to understand their behaviour--what they were "bred to do"--we must examine what they did before 1600. Members of the European water-dog family, identified by the dense, curly, ever-growing coat, are closely related.
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Poodles, water spaniels, water dogs, etc., are traditionally categorized among the spaniels. However, they seem always to have been considered water spaniels, differentiated from upland "setting" (or "couching") spaniels, which originated in Spain (which, from 1200-1500, had the most highly-developed animal husbandry in Europe). The job of a setting spaniel was to lie down upon finding partridge for a market or pot hunter, who then threw a net over birds and dogs, or erected a funnel net into which the birds were slowly driven. Medieval spaniels spread across Europe and into England, where our familiar spaniel varieties were derived; also, crossed with the Spanish Pointer, produced familiar varieties of setters. The Spanish Pointer pointed birds, standing and was slow-moving (a useful quality during the early years of firearms because of the time it took to re-load).
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