Our lost dogs

When a breed no longer has a job, be it turning a meat spit, hunting or herding, it often goes the way of the dodo. Patrick Galbraith recalls 10 extinct British dogs

With the loss of their specific jobs, several breeds have become extinct, reveals Patrick Galbraith

THE Kennel Club’s librarian Ciara Farrell has ‘two fat old cats’ and admits that, when she started her job, she ‘knew nothing about dogs’. Fifteen years later, however, she’s in her element, trawling through Jacobean manuscripts and Victorian diaries to aid my quest to discover Britain’s lost dogs.

‘I notice some of the breeds you’re interested in might be better described as types,’ she comments sagely, as I leaf through De Canibus: Dog and Hound in Antiquity. ‘If I’m talking about dogs before the 1850s, I try never to use the word “breed”. I use the words “breed type” and, even further back than that, I just say “type”.’

The notion of breeds was conceived in Victorian England, Miss Farrell explains, when the nation fell in love with dog shows, which necessitated a breed standard to judge one dog against another. Interestingly, the Temperance Movement keenly promoted dog shows as a sober and self-improving way to spend a Saturday. Miss Farrell confirms that those who attend Crufts today are still a well-behaved and generally sober sort.

Before the mid 19th century, dogs were grouped according to various practical uses. As those uses diminished, breeds suffered

—the endangered Glen of Imaal terrier (‘The luck of the Irish’, September 11) cannot legally fulfil its badger-hunting purpose and the wolfhound has been out of a job for years.

Will there be new breeds, I ask, as we wander round the gallery, past cabinets of china pugs, a huge Landseer and contemporary bronzes. ‘You’re not going to see many breeds of dog coming into being because, nowadays, we have so few canine-specific tasks,’ Miss Farrell reflects. ‘Instead, dogs are repurposed. The trainability and temperament of the retriever, for example, which made it so good for shooting, mean they are used as assistance dogs.’

How about notoriously unhelpful terriers? Well, there’s always Instagram, she explains. If a breed is in dire straits, The Kennel Club fires up social media and launches a very modern campaign to try to save it.

A lady’s choice: Paisley terriers had silky, silvery coats that demanded brushing