Eurasier

The Eurasier, or Eurasian dog, is a breed of dog of the spitz type that originated in Germany. It is widely known as a wonderful companion that maintains its own personality, has a dignified reserve to strangers, a strong bond to its family and that is relatively easy to train.

Appearance

The Eurasier is a balanced, well-constructed, medium-sized Spitz (Spitzen) type dog with prick ears. It comes in different colors: fawn, red, wolf-grey, solid black, and black and tan. All color combinations are allowed, except for pure white, white patches, and liver color. Fédération Cynologique Internationale (FCI) standards call for the Eurasier to have a thick undercoat and medium-long, loosely lying guard hair all over the body, with a short coat on the muzzle, face, ears, and front legs. The tail and the back of the front legs (feathers) and hind legs (breeches) should be covered with long hair. The coat on the Eurasier's neck should be slightly longer than on the body, but not forming a mane. The breed may have a pink, blue-black or spotted tongue.

The male has a height of 52 to 60 cm (20-23.5 inches) at the withers and weighs between 23 and 32 kg (50-70 lb) and the female has a height of 48 to 56 cm (19-22 inches) at the withers and weighs between 18 and 26 kg (40-57 lb).

Temperament

Eurasiers are calm, even-tempered dogs. They are watchful and alert, yet reserved towards strangers without being timid or aggressive. Eurasiers form a strong link to their families. For the full development of these qualities, the Eurasier needs constant close contact with its family, combined with understanding, yet consistent, training. They are extremely sensitive to harsh words or discipline and respond best to soft reprimand. The Eurasier is a combination of the best qualities of the Chow Chow, the Keeshond, and the Samoyed (dog), resulting in a dignified, intelligent breed.

Eurasiers were bred as companion dogs; as such they do poorly in a kennel environment such as those commonly used for institutionally trained service dogs, nor are they well suited for the social stresses of working as a sled or guard dog. Training should always be done through family members, not through strangers or handlers. Eurasiers should never be restricted to only a yard, kennel, crate, or chained up. They would pine and become depressed. Within these limitations, Eurasiers can work very well as therapy dogs. This breed enjoys all kinds of activities, especially if the activities involve their family. Eurasiers are calm and quiet indoors, outdoors they are lively and enjoy action. Eurasiers rarely bark but if they do, they usually have a good reason.

Health

Eurasiers are generally healthy dogs, though a small gene pool in the breed's early years has led to some hereditary diseases being seen occasionally. Known issues include hip dysplasia, luxating patella, and hypothyroidism, as well as eyelid and lash disorders such as distichiae, entropion, and ectropion.

Estrela Mountain Dog

The Estrela Mountain Dog is a large breed of dog which has been used for centuries in the Estrela Mountains of Portugal to guard herds and homesteads.

Description

Coat

The Estrela Mountain dog comes in two coat types. Both types should have coat resembling the texture of goat hair.

Long coat: The thick, slightly coarse outer coat lies close over the body and may be flat or slightly waved, but never curly. Undercoat is very dense and normally lighter in color than the outer coat. The hair on the front sides of the legs and the head is short and smooth. Hair on the ears diminishes in length from the base of the ears to the tips. The hair on the neck, the buttocks, the tail, and the back side of the legs is longer resulting in a ruff at the neck, breeches on the buttocks and backs of the legs, and feathering on the tail. The males can have a "lion's mane".

Short coat: The outer coat is short, thick, and slightly coarse, with a shorter dense undercoat. Any feathering should be in proportion.

Color

Fawn, wolf gray and yellow, with or without brindling, white markings or shadings of black throughout the coat. All colors have a dark facial mask, preferably black. Blue coloration is very undesirable.

Size

Desirable height for mature males is 25½ - 28½ inches and for mature females is 24½ - 27 inches. Mature males in good working condition weigh between 88 and 110 pounds. Mature females in good working condition weigh between 66 and 88 pounds.

Temperament

A large, athletic dog, the Estrela Mountain Dog is a formidable opponent for any predator. It is calm but fearless and will not hesitate to react to danger, making it an exceptional watchdog as well as an excellent guard dog. It is intelligent, loyal, and faithful, affectionate to those it knows but wary of those it does not. It is instinctively protective of any children in its family. It needs early and continued socialization to be trustworthy around small pets and other dogs.

It's important to begin training and socializing the Serra da Estrela dog from puppyhood to nurture its acceptance of different situations. This is a strong independent-minded breed that will need persistent training and consistent leadership. It has a tendency to bark, especially when protecting his or her territory. As with most livestock guardians, the Serra da Estrela dog is not a pet for everyone. Strong ownership is paramount.

Estonian Hound

The Estonian Hound is a scent hound-like breed which is the only dog breed developed in Estonia. It was bred in 1947 when the Soviet Union's national economy ministry decided that every country in the Union must have its own dog breed. The Estonian Kennel Union is working on the recognition of the breed by the Fédération Cynologique Internationale.

History

The Estonian Hound is relatively young breed that is already highly valued in Estonia, its country of origin. This breed resulted from the crossbreeding of several foreign dog breeds with local hunting dogs. The Estonian Hound’s development was announced by an ultimatum issued by the Soviet Union’s Ministry of Agriculture and Economy in 1947, which ordered every Soviet Republic to establish a local breed of hunting dogs to replace the large breeds of hunting dogs bred at that moment. These large dogs were blamed for the rapid decline of Estonia’s wildlife population; it was established that only dogs with a maximum height of 17 inches were allowed to hunt. The result was a very agile and hard driven breed that has enjoyed tremendous popularity since then: the modern Estonian Hound. After Estonia regained its independence, the Estonian Hound was proclaimed the country’s national dog.

Description

The Estonian Hound is a dog of medium size and a strong muscular body, bone structure and muscles that are well developed. It has no folds in its skin and drop ears. The coat is short and rough and should be shiny. The undercoat is weakly developed. This breed's eyes are dark brown colored. The Estonian Hound usually has black patches and a dark pigmented skin. The size of the patches is unlimited. Blackish-brown color, red patches and a saddle like patches on the back are also allowed, but the tip of the tail has to be white. The Estonian Hound's height is 17–21 inches (43–53 cm) and it weighs 33–44 pounds (15–20 kg).

Temperament

The Estonian Hound is happy and pleasant dog with a balanced, calm and active temperament and a high intelligence. It is friendly and should never be aggressive, so it needs to be socialized and exposed to new situations and environments in order to prevent it from being a bit timid. It is good with other dogs and usually also with cats if used to them as a puppy. They love human attention and can get upset when left alone. Proper human to canine communication is really important to its training. They are affectionate and easy to teach; this is important since they have to learn that they cannot hunt hoofed animals as it is forbidden in Estonia where only hare and foxes are allowed to be hunted. The Estonian Hound has a pleasant voice that doesn’t annoy when it hunts.

Entlebucher Mountain Dog

The Entlebucher Sennenhund or Entlebucher Mountain Dog is a medium-sized herding dog, it is the smallest of the four regional breeds that constitute the Sennenhund dog type. The name Sennenhund refers to people called Senn, herders in the Swiss Alps. Entlebuch is a region in the canton of Lucerne in Switzerland. The breed is also known in English as the Entelbuch Mountain Dog, Entelbucher Cattle Dog, and similar combinations.

Appearance

The female Entlebucher Sennenhund is a square; the male is a longer, less square, sturdy, medium-sized dog. It has small, triangular ears and rather small brown eyes. The head is well proportioned to the body, with a strong flat skull. The long jaw is well formed and powerful. The feet are compact, supporting its muscular body. The smooth coat is close and smooth with symmetrical markings of black, tan, and white. This tricolor coat has white on its toes, tail-tip, and the chest and blaze where the fur is soft and fluffy; the tan always lies between the black and the white. It has muscular, broad hips. The hocks are naturally well angled. The tail is sometimes docked, a practice which is now prohibited by law in many countries, or it may have a natural bobtail. Height at the withers is 19-20 ins (48–50 cm) and weight is 45-65 lbs (20–30 kg).

Temperament

As with all large, active working dogs, this breed should be well socialized early in life with other dogs and people, and be provided with regular activity and training. Temperament of individual dogs may vary. The Standard says that the breed is "good-natured and devoted towards people familiar to him, slightly suspicious of strangers."

Kennel club recognition

The Entlebucher Sennenhund is recognised internationally by the Fédération Cynologique Internationale, using the standard written in the breed's native Switzerland. Other national kennel clubs not affiliated with the Fédération Cynologique Internationale also recognise the breed, often writing their own versions of the breed standard.

The Entlebucher is recognised by The Kennel Club (UK) and the Canadian Kennel Club and placed in the Working Group. The United States Kennel Club (US) places the breed in the Guardian Dog Group. It is not yet recognised by the New Zealand Kennel Club or the Australian National Kennel Council. The breed is recognised by numerous small clubs and internet-based registries, where it is promoted as a rare breed for puppy buyers seeking a unique pet.

The breed was accepted into the American Kennel Club Stud Book on December 1, 2010 and became eligible to compete in the herding dog group on January 1, 2011.

Health issues

Inbreeding due to the small foundation stock numbers has led to Entlebuchers suffering from congenital defects, the most common of which is hip dysplasia. Hemolytic anemia also is known to occur. Progressive Retinal Atrophy (PRA) is also present in the breed. The National Entlebucher Mountain Dog Association (NEMDA), in collaboration with other organizations, is working to eliminate these issues from the breed through responsible breeding, genetic testing, and fact dissemination.

English White Terrier

The English White Terrier (also known as the White English Terrier or Old English Terrier) is an extinct breed of dog. The English White Terrier is the failed show ring name of a pricked-ear version of the white fox-working terriers that have existed in Great Britain since the late 18th century.

The name "English White Terrier" was invented and embraced in the early 1860s by a handful of breeders anxious to create a new breed from a prick-eared version of the small white working terriers that were later developed into the Fox Terrier, the Jack Russell Terrier, the Sealyham Terrier and later, in the United States, the Boston Terrier and the Rat Terrier. In the end, however, the Kennel Club hierarchy decided the "English White Terrier" was a distinction without a difference, while the dog's genetic problems made it unpopular with the public. Within 30 years of appearing on the Kennel Club scene, the English White Terrier had slipped into extinction. It was, however, crossbred with the Old English Bulldog giving rise to the Boston Terrier and Bull Terrier.

Breed history

Small bred working terriers have existed in Great Britain since at least the late 18th century. These dogs have always been quite variable in terms of size and shape, with dogs ranging in size from 10 to 15 inches, and with both drop ears and prick ears, smooth, broken, and rough coats.(Burns, 2005)

With the rise of dog shows in the 1860s, breed fancy enthusiasts raced to name and "improve" every type of dog they could find, and terriers were at the very top of their list. From the long-extent white-bodied working terriers came the Fox terrier, the Jack Russell terrier, the Parson Russell terrier, and the Sealyham terrier.

In the rush to create and claim new breeds, competing groups of dog breeders sometimes came up with different names for the same dog, and it was very common for entirely fictional breed histories to be cobbled up as part of a campaign to declare a new breed and create a bit of personal distinction for a dog's originator (to say nothing of sales).

In the 1860s and 1870s, a small group of dog show enthusiasts tried to claim that prick-eared versions of white working terriers were an entirely different breed from those same dogs with dropped ears. The problems with this claim were legion, however. For one thing, prick and drop-eared dogs were often found in the same litter, while entirely white dogs had a propensity for deafness and were therefore nearly useless in the field. (Briggs, 1894)

In 1894, Rawdon Briggs Lee wondered, in his book Modern Dogs, about the relatively recent origin of the "English White Terrier" and noted that, "It has been surmised that the original English White Terrier had been a fox terrier crossed with a white Italian greyhound" (i.e. a toy breed).

Lee noted that at the London dogs shows where the breed first appeared in 1863–1864, the dogs were presented in two classes: "one being for dogs and bitches under six or seven pounds weight, as the case may be; the other for dogs and bitches over that standard."

In 1894, about the time that English White Terriers finally disappeared from the Kennel Club scene (it was always a pet and show dog, and never a working dog), Lee noted that "The most recent London-bred specimens I have seen have been comparative toys, under 10lb. in weight, and with a rounded skull, or so-called 'apple head," which so persists in making its appearance in lilliputian specimens of the dog – an effect of inbreeding."

Though Lee included a club description of the dog claiming the dog could be found as heavy as 20 lbs in weight, Lee (a noted Kennel Club judge and Kennel Editor of The Field sport hunting magazine) took the trouble to note that "As a matter of fact, I do not ever remember seeing a really so-called pure English White Terrier up to 20 lbs, the maximum allowed by the club."

Lee describes the English White Terrier as "the most fragile and delicate of all our terriers," noting that "he is not a sportsman's companion," but that he "makes a nice house dog" but "requires a considerable amount of cuddling and care."

Lee notes that at some of the early dog shows "some of the specimens were shaped more like an Italian greyhound than as a terrier" and that the dog "is particularly subject to total or partial deafness."

Though the dog still existed as a breed in 1894, Briggs could see the writing on the wall and did not bemoan the possible extinction of this show-ring failure: "While regretting extremely the decay of the White English Terrier, I am afraid they must bow to the inevitable, and give place to dogs better suited to the wants and conveniences of the present day than they unfortunately are."

Appearance

From Modern Dogs by Rawdon Briggs Lee (1894):

The description of the white English terrier is drawn up by the club as follows; the table of points is not issued by the club, but the figures, in my opinion, indicate the numerical value of each

point, and not carried higher than the back.

COAT: Close, hard, short, and glossy.

COLOUR: Pure white, coloured marking to disqualify.

CONDITION: Flesh and muscles to be hard and firm.

WEIGHT: From 12 lb. to 20 lb.

English Water Spaniel

The English Water Spaniel is a breed of dog that has been extinct since the first part of the 20th century, with the last specimen seen in the 1930s. It was best known for its use in hunting waterfowl and for being able to dive as well as a duck. It is described as similar to a Collie or to a cross between a Poodle and a Springer Spaniel with curly fur and typically in a white and liver/tan pattern.

Pre-dating the Irish Water Spaniel and thought to have been referred to by Shakespeare in Macbeth, it is believed to have genetically influenced several modern breeds of dog, including the American Water Spaniel, Curly Coated Retriever and the modern variety of Field Spaniel. It is unknown if the breed was involved in the creation of the Irish Water Spaniel.

Appearance

A drawing of a furry dark dog facing to the right. Its legs and belly are white, and it holds its front left paw in the air.

Very unlike the Irish Water Spaniel in appearance, the English Water Spaniel more closely resembled a curly-haired version of the Springer Spaniel, with some traits of the Collie, poodle, and setter. The white and liver (tan) dog stood about 20 inches (51 cm) tall and looked like a typical, lean, long-legged spaniel with long ears and tail, a white underbelly, and a brown back, except that it had the coat of a water dog.

The English Water Spaniel was described as having a long and narrow head, with small eyes and ears that were long and covered in thick curls of fur. The body was moderately stout and barrel shaped, but not as much as that of the Field Spaniel. Its legs were long and straight with large feet.[9] The dog varied in size with the larger varieties known as "Water Dogs" and the smaller as "Water Spaniels".

Due to the English Water Spaniel's colours of liver (tan) and white, it has been suggested that the breed may have been the source of the colours now found in the modern English Springer Spaniel and Welsh Springer Spaniel breeds.

Hunting

Paintings by Henry Bernard Chalon and Ramsay Richard Reinagle both show English Water Spaniels working with their masters hunting ducks. An engraving by Henry Thomas Alken Snr. shows a slightly different looking English Water Spaniel, but also reinforces its area of work by again showing it while duck hunting. In The Sportsman's Repository (1820), the author advises that if an individual wishes to hunt ducks or any other type of waterfowl, then the hunter had best use an English Water Spaniel.

The breed is described as swimming and diving as well as the ducks themselves; and they are intelligent enough to avoid being lured away from the nesting places. The author described the best variety of the breed to be those with long ears whose coat was white under the belly and around the neck but brown on the back.