My first three Brittanys were American, two orange and white, one liver and white. A couple topped the maximum without being overweight, and they happen to have been the best hunters of all, so while standards are useful to establish a breed description, they don't dictate ability in the field. We've had dogs that failed to conform either to the size or the weight. The "ideal" Brit is between 17 and 20.5 inches at the withers, and between 35 and 50 pounds. The American Field Registry is the oldest of all, dating to 1874. Other registries include the United Kennel Club and the Canadian Kennel Club. AKC actually began in 1884 as a registry for sporting dogs (the Club's symbol is a pointer). While the AKC registers all of them only as "Brittany," the United Kennel Club has distinguished between French and American Brittanies since 1992.ĪKC is the best-known registry, but there are others. Brits are the only pointing spaniel, but since they now aren't classed as spaniels by Yankees, that distinction doesn't mean much anymore. In the field, color doesn't make any difference, either for hunting or field trials. Because we had several black and white puppies for sale, I had a golden opportunity to jack up the price, but I resisted the temptation and no doubt will go directly to Heaven (or, as Will Rogers is alleged to have said, "If dogs don't go to Heaven, I want to go where they go"). Once a prospective puppy buyer asked me if it was true that black and white Brits had better noses than other color combinations. The French have recognized black as a Brittany color for more than 50 years. Any purebred Brittany can be AKC registered, but AKC does not recognize black and white or tri-colors for bench shows. The AKC ( is of mixed feelings about any French-American differences, kind of like many humans in general. Both ran with the pointers and all too often tried to fly with the birds. One was an American Brit, the other a French. We've had two exceptionally wide-ranging Brits over the years. To make another generalization, French Brits tend to work closer because they're bred to hunt with a walking hunter, while American Brits range wider, often in field trials with horse-mounted hunters. Research indicates the ancestor of the Brit was a French spaniel that was both short-tailed and black or liver-coated, but history that far back is hazy and questionable. French dogs also can be black and white or tri-color, while American Brits are usually orange and white or liver and white. Technically, they're all French because that's where they originated, but the two have diverged in interesting ways over the 90 years since the first Brits came to the United States.Īmerican Brits typically have reddish noses and yellow eyes, while their French counterparts have black noses and darker eyes. In the interests of full disclosure, I've been a Brittany man exclusively for 40 years, first with American Brittanys, then with French Brittanys. (The AKC dropped the "spaniel" from the name in 1982.) The first French breed recognition was in 1907, but it wasn't until 1934, the year I was born, that the American Kennel Club recognized the Brittany spaniel as a distinct breed. Today the tail-less Brittany is standard, but most puppies have their tails docked along with clipped dewclaws a day or so after birth. (Jerry Imprevento photo)Ī Frenchman from the town of Pontou came up with two tail-less puppies from a cross between his dog and a visiting Englishman's dog. But it was the mid-1800s before the first dogs appeared that could reliably be called Brittanys. Illustrations from the 1600s show a dog similar in appearance to the Brit. The current theory is that pointers and spaniels got together to create the modern Brittany, although other sources say it was a spaniel-setter mix. Brittanys (in Europe and Canada they still are Brittany spaniels, but in the United States we have dropped the "spaniel") are of French origin, logically enough from the province of Brittany, which juts into the Atlantic Ocean like Charles DeGaulle's nose.Īll sporting dogs are a mixture of breeds, and the Brittany is no exception.
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