A little bit of history

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There has always been quite a difference in culture between “the isles” and “the continent” and one of the most profound differences is, in my opinion, that the Brits seem to be able to make a game out of everything – and become successful in it. I mean, if you would, soberly, try to explain the fun of watching two people throwing sharpened sticks at a round board to, let's say, any average Czech you would raise nothing but eyebrows. Nonetheless, darts tournaments draw crowds of visitors in the UK. So by making a game out of training hunting dogs and organizing tournaments, the British had bred excellent lines of specialized working dogs that Continental breeds compared to as rudimentary poachers. Quite effective in their own way but useless when firearms got introduced into hunting some 200 years ago.

 

So when the old continental aristocrats took up modern hunting as a field sports, there was an immediate need for good hunting dogs, which for obvious reasons were imported from the British Isles. The vast continental forests and marshes held, apart from the obvious feather and hair, stocks of big game like deer, boar and even wisent and elk and in these settings the British, highly specialized dogs did not quite live up to their expectations. Apart from that, the field sports did not quite reach the popularity it had with the British Aristocracy and hunting remained for a large part just a way of acquiring food, which hard work as it be, was preferably outsourced to the lower aristocracy. Those people had neither the funding nor the time to keep large kennels of specialized dog breeds, as they would have many other tasks like forestry and military. Culture and hunting environment demanded for a new and versatile breed of dogs, with the power, sharpness and endurance of the old continental dogs, and the decency and speed of the British setters and pointers, which is exactly what they tried to achieve when crossing British breeds with inland hunting dogs. Although many myths float around, the exact time-frame and more importantly the most dominant people in this saga remain shrouded in the mists of history but it seems like the Weimaraner was amongst the first of the successful breeding products and the German Wirehaired Pointer amongst the last.