Spaniel/ Gundog Lurchers

[TOMO 26,115]

What was that dog like Tomo?

Sadly put to sleep around a year old,,,,result of a bust up with my then Mrs ,,,somthing I've always regretted deeply...

[Bosun11 537]

 

What was that dog like Tomo?

Sadly put to sleep around a year old,,,,result of a bust up with my then Mrs ,,,somthing I've always regretted deeply...

 

 

Shame that Tomo, looks a real handy animal.

[TOMO 26,115]

I know mate,, I really bonded with her as well,,,had her doing all kinds of tricks,,circus type stuff,,,as well blind retrieves and all the hunting related training,,,she picked it up so easily,,,although I hadn't taken her out lamping or ferreting befor she was pts,,,,she was marking rabbits,,,mind no surprise there most dogs will,,,and she had all the right ingredients,,,,yep a big regret

[wuyang 513]

Just measured mine and she's 21.5 to shoulder.

Edited April 3, 2016 by wuyang

[hagan 3]

Very good thread interesting lads, thanks

[hagan 3]

Truther you any pics of your runners mate

[Mustelid 143]

Just had a chat about this thread with a mate of mine. The question we couldn't answer is why aren't there more about?

[krawnden 1,036]

Shame about yours Tomo - sounds like it could have been handy.

 

Mustelid - I think fashion and heresay/word of mouth/rumour/publicity has a lot to do with it. Dogs go in and out of fashion. In the 1980's pit bulls and rottweilers were all the rage and you saw them everywhere. Fifteen years ago it was incredibly rare to find a working cocker on a shoot, now they're everywhere. Turn the clock back even further and fox terriers were very common - now they're almost as rare as hen's teeth. Same goes for curly coated retrievers.

 

I first got into running dogs around 35 years ago, and back then deerhound/greyhound crosses were very popular. Now they seem to have fallen out of fashion, and the 'must have' ingredient is bull.

 

Love him or hate him, I think the popularity of collie crosses has been massively influenced by Brian Plummer. At the time he was in the public eye it was before the days of the internet. So magazines and books were lapped up by hunters, and his views on collie crosses were widely known about and inevitably a lot of people viewed him as a trusted authority and took his word for it about collie crosses (before anyone starts, I'm not saying Plummer - or collie crosses - are either good or bad. I'm simply trying to answer Mustelid's question.)

 

Now that we have the internet and gazillions of different TV channels, I think it's more difficult for any one person in the lurcher world to have so much influence. Because working dogs of any type, and especially lurchers, aren't mainstream. But imagine if there was ever a mainstream TV programme about working lurchers. You only have to look at the humungous influence of people like Jamie Oliver, Delia Smith, Nigella Lawson etc. They can present a programme mentioning a particular recipe ingredient and the next day hundreds of thousands of people are at their local supermarket trying to buy it. If there was a programme on BBC1 featuring somebody putting loads of game in the bag with a spaniel lurcher, and showing its versatility, great hunting technique etc, I bet people would be queuing up to buy spaniel lurcher pups.

 

I think a lot of people are too blinkered in their views. Maybe they think it's better to stick with tried and tested ways of breeding lurchers. But we all know that doing that is no guarantee of great results. My personal view is that gundogs have some terrific working traits that would be beneficial in a lurcher and I'd love to see gundog based lurchers become more common so we could really get to see what they have to offer.

[gamerooster 1,179]

Couldn't of put it better myself

[wuyang 513]

Like it always has been........horses for courses. The hunt breed dogs out there have very specific skill sets. You've got to really want them in your lurcher. If you just do ferreting or lamping or bushing or you need a dog with lightening acceleration then a general collie, bed, bull, lurcher x lurcher or whippet will general excel so I can see why nobody bothers with gundogs in the mix.

 

For me I get my enjoyment from watching a dog that's main instinct is to hunt its quarry. Mine is quite quick, but by no means the quickest dog I've owned, yet she covers more ground, provides herself with more game to chase, and brings me more back than my others. Her catch to chase ratio may be less, but the amount she catches is more. She has more field craft than any lurcher I've worked.

[Truther 1,579]

Truther you any pics of your runners mate

 

No really good pics mate, i can't load any new ones up either, my laptops acting up with pics vids?

 

 

 

 

 

I don't class the little bitch as a "runner" at all mate, fast busher that takes the odd bit of game that's all, but that was what i wanted so only used a 19" stud dog over a 16" spaniel bitch, fair turn of speed for her size though, very agile, and the best tree climber iv'e ever seen.

[Truther 1,579]

I remember the exact moment x'ing a spaniel with a whippet entered my head funnily enough..........Me and an old mate were having a casual mooch about with a couple of lurchers and his two ESS bitches...........Walking over a set aside field the spaniels picked up a scent, and one of them flushed a cock pheasant from some rough grass, the spaniel jumped for the bird just missing it (these spaniels aren't shot over, they nail game) my mate turned to me and said something like "they need a bit of whippet" and it started me thinking about the whippet x terriers, whippet lab from years ago...............My lad had a bitch from the mates breeding and offered to breed me a pup..........The rest is history.

 

A few doubts were cast, like, put a spaniel nose on a whippet frame and you'll not get it back lol............Could have gone that way i suppose, but iv'e honestly no regrets, if anything its worked better than i expected............The really funny thing is you couldn't give me a spaniel or a whippet, both good dogs in their own right depending what you're doing with them, but wouldn't suit me..........Put the two together and iv'e got exactly what i wanted.

 

At this moment in time, between me and my two boys, we've got a fair variety of x's, collie, bull, bedlington, and dogs with a mixture of just about every common x, even a bit of saluki in one bitch.........They all have good and bad points.........I'm not trying to say spaniel is any different, bound to be some downside depending how critical you want to be, or what you expect from a dog, but i think its worth some trial and error, specially the "one for the pot" mooching lads. Like iv'e said in earlier posts, a nippy half x is all i'm likely to ever need, but just pushing it that bit further might be worth a shot?

[hagan 3]

Thanks for that truther

[gamerooster 1,179]

Breed a 3/4 bred litter, and if you feel it's gone to far put them back to a 1/2 cross

[Bosun11 537]

Though i have no idea if you could find sound working retrievers but if you could, those flat coat and better still, curly coat would be very interesting. Both being rangy enough to produce a good racy type.