Suwannee Cockers
The Place for Natural Merles and Sables
FROM THE CAVES TO THE SHOW RING
Geneticists now believe that all dogs originated from a single species, probably an East Asian wolf seeking an easy meal from humans, and perhaps the warmth of a Paleolithic fire. "We think there was a series of domestication events in East Asia," says Norine E. Noonan, a dog researcher at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. "It happened a lot longer ago than anybody once thought--at least 100,000 years ago." Noonan believes that there was probably a set of "dog Eves," or a central "proto-dog" which adopted humans as their protectors and helped man with the hunt.
Deborah Lynch, of the Canine Studies Institute in Aurora, Ohio says, based on genetic research, "there were only about a half dozen domestication events in East Asia." From that time dogs followed humans everywhere, even eventually migrating to the Americas. "Domesticated dogs are much older than we once thought," says Lynch. "They literally walked out of the caves with us." However, the earliest dog remains that have been found so far-- a short jawbone with crowded teeth found in the Middle East--only date to about 14,000 years ago. But fossils that have been found in both China and England do suggest that wolves and our human ancestors shared very close quarters as far back as 400,000 to 500,000 years ago, forming a symbiotic relationship with each other, as wolves gradually evolved into dogs.
Eventually people learned that they could selectively breed dogs to help them with particular jobs such as hunting game, herding animals, digging into animal burrows, or even attacking other people. So, over time, by selective breeding, the dog became the most variable animal on Earth in terms of shape, size, and color, ranging from tiny toys to huge wolf hounds.
But along the way the general characteristics of the wolf had to change in order for dogs to adapt to living with people, and it is generally recognized today that all dogs exhibit some type of paedomorphosis, or neoteny, which is a characteristic in animals wherein juvenile traits of the animal are retained by the adults--in other words adult dogs act like juvenile wolves, which is good, because none of us could live with an adult wolf, much less a pack of them. Large eyes, shorter muzzles, and curved and floppy tails are characteristics of neoteny. Recent genetic research suggests that neoteny in dogs is controlled by a single biochemical called thyroxine, which is a hormone produced by the thyroid gland, which in turn regulates several growth and developmental genes. However, there are still some semi-primitive hounds alive today, and some of the Nordic and Asian breeds still exhibit limited juvenile wolf behaviors, but all dogs do exhibit some degree of paedomorphosis. In fact paedomorphosis is one of the defining characteristics of the domesticated dog.
Dog geneticists do not believe that any modern dog is descended in a straight line from wolves. They do believe that the various types of proto-dogs have mated with other proto-dogs, and perhaps again back with wolves over thousands of years, but by about 1,000 years ago most groups of people understood very well how to select and breed for the characteristics they wanted.
From their ancient wall paintings and sculptures we know that the Egyptians bred hounds for both hunting and guard work, and that dogs were revered and protected in Egyptian society. They even worshipped a dog god called Anubis who was the judge and the lord of the afterlife. The Romans were responsible for a number of phenotypes (the physical appearance of an animal) that over time became our modern breeds, as Rome was a melting pot of dogs from all of the Roman conquests. In excavations at Pompeii "Beware of Dog" signs have been found, preserved by the ash fall and designed in mosiacs. But after the fall of Rome large amounts of dogs became semi-feral again, and throughout the following centuries there was the above mentioned constant mating back and forth between the "selected" dogs and the older types, and even the mating back with wolves, so that the genetic history of our modern breeds is quite complicated. Even today the wolf and dog can still interbreed, and are therefore the same species. But during the Dark Ages after the fall of the Roman Empire, the religious monasteries took up the job of breeding dogs for cash income, thus preserving some types of selected dogs.
Marco Polo reported that during his visit to China he saw all sorts of dogs, from hunting hounds and large guard types, to small pug faced types, who lived very pampered lives. The Chow Chows were temple guards. Finally, in Europe over the last four or five centuries, the modern Western breeds began to settle into their various phenotypes, creating the various modern breeds that we are all familiar with today. Even the American Indians had several types of dogs, and the Cherokee used dogs as both guards and pets, and the Sioux used dogs to help them move their camps, with each family keeping between six and 12 dogs to help move their belongings. And the European settlers of America brought their herders, retrievers and hunters with them. However, very few modern dogs now resemble any dog that lived as close to us in time as five hundred years ago, as every modern breed has been created by breeding together already existing breeds, creating a different phenotype.
Barry McDonald, a dog trainer and writer, writes "A breed is nothing more than a mutt that has had its genetic pool frozen. In modern times, we end up with the illusion that there are 'breeds' of dogs, and breed organizations such as the AKC have adopted arbitrary standards which say 'This is what a Visula must be like,' and 'This is what a Boston Terrier is,' but every pedigreed dog is the end result of a million mutts being inter-bred."
Bruce Folger, author of the book "The New Encyclopedia of the Dog" refers to the millions of semi-feral dogs that live in third world villages today as "Primitive Dogs." These are dogs that have not changed for thousands of years in either their appearance or their behavior, making them different from the domestic dog. Dingos, for example, have been traced back as far as 3,500 years ago, remaining vitrually unchanged both in their genotype and phenotype for all of that time. And Besenjis can be traced back as far as 5,000 to 7,000 years ago in Central Africa, through pictographs. But Ray Coppinger, in his book written with Lorna Coppinger, "Dogs: A Startling New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior & Evolution," has popularized the term Village Dog for the everpresent dogs that lurk at the dump heaps and live on the streets in rural villages across the globe.
A dog's purpose generally determined the selection of its shape and color. "That's why guard dogs are always a dark color," Deborah Lynch, of the Canine Studies Institute, says, as guard dogs often work at night where black can help disguise their presence until they choose to make it known. "There is almost always a functional reason for why dogs look the way they do," says Lynch. She also says that living in a human environment has helped shape dog health, and that the leading cause of death in dogs over ten years of age is now cancer. "In the company of man, dogs may have been under very similar pressures, and that may have given rise to similar diseases," says Gordon Lark, a canine genetic researcher at the University of Utah.
There is a recent paper called "Genetic Structure of the Purebred Domestic Dog" by Parker et al, in which "microsatellites" on the chromosomes have been used to classify dog breeds, and it was found that despite their looks, the German Shepherd type dogs are far removed from wild wolf populations. The closest found to wild wolves were a group of Oriental breeds comprising the Akita, the Chow Chow, the Shar Pei, and the Shiba Inu. The next closest was the Basenji, and the next closest were the Siberian Husky and the Malamute, which are both breeds that were created in the 1930's from native dogs. Then the next closest were the ancient Saluki and Afghan Hound breeds, and the most remote were "all other breeds," which include all modern European dog breeds.
The Origin of Spaniels
Tradition says that the ancestors of all hunting Spaniels originated in Spain, and that Spaniels were eventually imported into Britian from Spain. However, the British canine historian, Colonel David Hancock, suggests that the French verb "espanir," which means "to crouch or to flatten," describes the Spaniel's hunting posture, rather than its place of origin, and some historians have speculated that the Spaniel originated in the Pyrenees Mountains between Spain and France, or perhaps even in Southern France itself. But Hancock also believes that Spaniels could have originated as early as during the Roman Empire (27 B.C. - A.D. 476), and that the word Spaniel could come from the old Italian verb "spaniare," meaning "to get out of a trap or net."
Hunters with nets worked with spaniels before guns were invented, often with sight hounds and falcons. The falcon flying overhead would keep the birds hiding in the bushes, and the Spaniels would then eventually flush the birds out of the bushes, and the sight hounds and the men with nets would then capture the birds.
It is possible that Spaniels may have arrived in England during Caesar's invasion (54-55 BC). But a description by Gaston Phebus in the 1300's is the first actual mention we have of the existence of Spaniels. By the early 1700's, with the introduction of the gun, Spaniels were expected to both flush and retrieve game. But by then Spaniels had been divided into the setting Spaniels, which were those that crept forward and pointed their game, allowing hunters to ensnare them with nets, and the springing Spaniels, which were those that sprang pheasants and partridges for hunting with falcons, and rabbits for hunting with greyhounds. But with the advent of guns the Spaniels were further divided into both land and water Spaniels, with the latter retrieving downed birds from the water.
By the 1800's the Spaniels had been divided into seven working breeds: the Clumber, the Sussex, the Welsh Springer, the English Springer, the Field Spaniel, the Irish Water Spaniel and the Cocker Spaniel. And there were also the toy Spaniels that were bred to keep my Lady's hands warm on a cold winter's night.
The Springers were expected to "spring" game from the brush, and the smaller Cocker, which could penetrate thicker brush, was named for the Woodcock. For centuries both the Cocker and the Springer were developed together, being distinguished only by their relative sizes, until 1892 when the Kennel Club of England recognised the two sizes as separate breeds, but they were still born into the same litters for many years, with the dividing line between them being 25 pounds.
In 1882 a dog named Obo II was imported into the United States from England by F. F. Pitcher, a New York Spaniel breeder. Obo II was a black dog with a particularly heavy, curly coat. The first Obo was the offspring of a Sussex spaniel sire and a field spaniel dam--field spaniels are related to springers.
Obo II was not the first Cocker imported into the United States, but he was probably the most important in setting the standard for the breed. Until the 1930's both the English and the American Cocker were considered the same dog in America, and both came from the same litters, with the American Cocker being the smaller dog. But American woodcocks were smaller than European woodcocks, so American hunters preferred the smaller dog. By the mid 1930's the American breeders of the English Cocker decided to separate out the two types of Cockers, and in 1946 the American Cocker Spaniel was officially separated from the English Cocker Spaniel by the American Kennel Club. But it took until 1968 for the English Kennel Club to finally give the American Cocker separate status from the English Cocker, and today, after about 60 years of gene separation the two breeds now look very different, with the English Cocker retaining the older type head, a longer body, and a less dense coat.
American Cocker Spaniels are now mostly companion and show dogs, but they can still track, hunt, retrieve, do agility, and compete in obedience. But their merry dispositions and effervescent personalities made American Cockers number one in registrations with the American Kennel Club for many, many years, and at the height of their popularity as the number one dog over 70,000 Cocker pups were registered with the AKC in one year. Fortunately, some breeders feel, Cockers are no longer the most popular AKC registered dog--that honor belongs to the Labrador Retriever, with over 144,000 pups registered in 2003--while American Cockers only registered a little over 20,000 pups that same year. But American Cockers were still number 14 in all AKC registrations in 2003.
So our merry little Cocker pups, as a breed, have descended through the centuies to become the attractive companions that we love so much today. But as much as some people would like to "freeze" our Cockers in both type and personality, as they are now, we believe that change is inevitable--in all of the breeds--as the modern world becomes "smaller," through more population and modern communications, and as people's needs for animals change. Right now the Cocker Spaniel in general--and we are not necessarily speaking about show dogs--is undergoing change, becoming more of a house pet than a field dog, which certainly brings about a change in temperament, as field dogs roam and need quite a bit of exercise. And the trend is toward smaller dogs, even going far below the current written standard in height and weight, with the growth in numbers of the "mini" Cocker, which is really a toy size. And the "outlaw" colors of sable and merle are gaining in popularity. These trends reflect demographics, for as the very numerous Baby Boomers near retirement age, they are often desirous of pretty, even flashy, smaller dogs that fit better into smaller households, frequently in a condo or a townhouse, where there is little or no yard. And a smaller dog can be more easily handled by older, even arthritic, hands.
People have always changed dogs to suit their needs--this is what the domesticated dog is all about--and these changes will continue, no matter what the written standard of any breed says. Indeed, over the years, the standard for most of the breeds has continually changed, again reflecting what people want and need in their relationship with "Man's Best Friend."
TO A DOG
So, back again?
-- And is your errand done,
Unfailing one?
How quick the gray world, at your morning look,
Turns wonder book!
Come in -- O guard and guest;
Come, O you breathless, from a lifelong quest!
Search my heart; and if a comfort be,
Ah, comfort me.
You eloquent one, you best
Of all diviners, so to trace
The weather gleams upon a face;
With wordless, worrying paw,
Adventuring the law!
You shaggy Loveliness,
What call was it? -- What dream beyond a guess,
Lured you, gray ages back,
From that lone bivouac
Of the wild pack? --
Was it your need or ours? The calling trail
Of Faith that should not fail?
Of hope dim understood? --
That you should follow our poor humanhood,
Only because you would!
To search and circle -- follow and outstrip,
Men and their fellowship;
and keep your heart no less,
Your to-and-fro of hope and wistfulness,
Through all world-weathers and against all odds!
Can you forgive us, now? --
Your fallen gods?
Josephine Preston Peabody
Designed and Maintained by
BIG OAKS DESIGN
BigOaksDesign@Gmail.com
Copyright Suwannee Cockers 2004-2007
