| Archive for workinghprs.myfastforum.org Chat forum for owners of working HPR and Versatile gundog breeds. |
| chiendog |
Pont Audemer SpanielYes, yet another spaniel (Epagneul) breed you've probably never heard of. I am quite familiar with the breed having lived with a Pont Audemer Spaniel for 6 years. I've also hunted over a few others. I've posted some words and images to my blog about our "Ponto" named Uma.http://chiendog.blogspot.com/ |
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| windem bang |
Is this a breed of H.P.R. and, if so, does it work similarly to the brittany ?
Bill T. |
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| windem bang |
Sorry Craig - I have just read up on it and now know that it is a pointing breed. I would like to know how this breed works by comparison to a brittany. Is it easier taught ? Is it a keener retriever ? Is it as fast a hunter ? Is it naturally a close or a wide ranger or is this highly variable as it is in the brittany breed ?
I realise some of these questions may be unanswerable but I would appreciate you giving the answers a try. Thanks Bill T. |
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| BritAnnie |
If its a pointer it isn't like a Brittany, is it? 
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| josie |
http://www.sarahsdogs.com/breeds/pont-audemer_spaniel/ | ||||||||
| BritAnnie |
Are there any in the UK and what have the KC classified them as. From that description they are HPR's | ||||||||
| chiendog |
I've posted some information on the breed at www.ponto.ca
The description at the Sarah's dog's link is accurate...to a point.
While many have extolled the abilities of the Ponto to work the marshes...and I am sure some are fairly good at it...to state that the breed surpasses the hunting prowess of any other spaniel in the wetlands is ridiculous. My Uma is a mediocre water worker at best.. as is her cousin Vinnie. Their breeder, the most successful and prolific breeder of Pontos in the world does very little duck/goose hunting and bases his selection of breeding stock mainly on run and point. Other breeders may pay more attention to the water working aspect of the breed, but lets face it, in a good year the entire world wide production of Ponto pups is less than 50 so saying that any breeder is developing a particular strain with certain talents is a bit of a stretch. And if I there is indeed a French spaniel breed that does surpass the others in terms of water work, it would certainly be the Picardy....not the Ponto.
There are 6 (possibly 7) French pointing spaniel breeds. Hardly a "vast" family. Nonetheless, the Ponto is one of the varieties. Interestingly they were all considered variations within the same breed or family "Les Epagneuls de France" until the late 1800's when the trend to subdivide and individualize the breeds took hold.
Tough question to answer. First of all, there is a huge variety of Brittany types out there from fairly close working to over the horizon rockets. And some Pontos have a Brittany ancestor lurking in the closet 2 or 3 generations back...so there are many similarities. However, in a nutshell the differences between a Brittany and a Ponto are: Coat. Pontos are curly, always brown or brown and grey/white. Size. Pontos should be larger than Brittanies...yet smaller than a Picardy Range. Most Pontos are close to medium ranging dogs. Some (like the mother of Uma) are very wide runners. Uma is my best pheasant dog since she usually works more or less within gun-range. Speed. On average a Ponto will not be as fast as the fastest brittanies which can rival setters. But Pontos are lively, quick workers. Point: It is slower to develop in the Ponto and due to the infusion of Irish Water Spaniel ( a non-pointing breed) can be less pronounced or even absent in some pontos. All ours point well and some back (honour) other dogs naturally. Retrieve. Probably somewhat better than a Brittany (which is not saying much actually). Some Pontos with a more recent dose of Irish Water Spaniel can be quite good retrievers though. Training: easier and harder. Easier in that they are not as stubborn as some brittanies can be. Harder in that they can fold under the least bit of pressure. Training a ponto is a bit like working with rope. You can pull but you cannot push. I've learned a lot about the breed in the last ten years and remain a loyal fan. But I've had to readjust my thinking and tailor my training methods to suit the Ponto. While my Weims live to hunt and live to take training, the Ponto lives to hunt...and sees formal training more as interference than anything else. It is best to just leave them to their own devices. In a way, they are born trained. What you get is what you get. A well bred Ponto needs only to be taken to the field...it will run, point and fetch on its own. Try to mess with it too much and it will wave a white flag. That is not to say we've done no training...but we've disguised it as play and accept what we get. Oh, and one more thing. To my knowledge, there are no Pontos in the UK. There are three in North America, a half dozen or so in Finland and about 300 in France. My friend currently has about a dozen and is actually looking to place two lovely 18 month old males (he's recently moved and needs to downsize a bit). If you know anyone looking for a very nice started dog, drop me a pm. |
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| windem bang |
Thanks for the info. It doesn't look like we will be seeing this breed working in Britain any time soon.
Bill T. |
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| chiendog |
Probably not.
If the Brittany, the most popular French dog of them all and the one that has conquered much of the shooting world has barely even been noticed in the UK, then other breeds like the Ponto, Picardy and Francais don't stand a chance. It's a pity though. The French breeds should be better known on both sides of the Atlantic. Unlike in Germany, French upland shooting traditions are similar to our own. And their dogs have been developed more in line with the way we use them..as HPR's without the hound/terrier/watchdog aspects. And it makes sense that they should be similar to the English breeds, they've all received generous quantities of English blood (setter, pointer) in the last century and a half. Why the English and Americans overlook the French breeds (except the Brittany) while wholeheartedly embracing the German breeds is an interesting puzzle that involves a bit of digging into historical geopolitics....maybe I will tackle it in a future blog post. |
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| windem bang |
I agree with much of that. I have always believed that dogs imported into this country should "fit in" with what is expected of gundogs in this country. Some of the German breeds are now beginning to fit in pretty well.
Personally I do not think "man sharp" dogs belong here and neither do dogs that will happily attack oher animals. I do not think aggression is a trait needed in British gundogs. I too have wondered why more of the French breeds do not appear here.There is a French breed that looks so much like a G.S.P. that I'm left wondering why the G.S.P. was invented !............Maybe that French breed isn't such a good worker ? I don't know for I have never seen one in the flesh or even working on film. Bill T. |
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| chiendog |
Indeed. And the same thing can be said for German breeds in North America. They have managed to fit in by either being modified to suit us or by hunters modifying their approach to hunting/testing. For some breeds the change has been very subtle. The Large Munsterlander club for instance has succeeded in keeping all the excellent qualities of the breed while reducing its sharpness on predators. For other breeds, the changes have been a bit much: we now have "German" wirehair and shorthair pointers that are anything but German. They have been "improved" beyond all recognition. And some hunters have changed their habits to suit. It can be quite odd to see normally cowboy-hat wearing Texans decked out in Lederhosen! Indeed, due to the importation and use of the German breeds, and the lobbying efforts of their ownwers, there are now a number of states and provinces that allow blood tracking of big game with dogs.
Yes, many hunters/breeders on this side of the pond agree with your sentiments. The sharpness issue really highlights the difference in attitudes between German HPR breeders/hunters and those in other countries to the west of them. And it also reveals just how different the history of hunting/shooting in those areas are. In the UK, hunting (you call it shooting) has always been considered "sport". In North America, we too consider it sport, but for many (my family included) it was also a way of putting meat on the table (my grandfathers, uncles etc. hunted year round mainly to feed their growing families). In Germany, there were/are of course sporting and food gathering aspects to hunting, but there was/is also a great deal of emphasis placed on game and forestry management. The dog's role therefore is much more than just hunting for the gun. It is expected to dispatch predators as part of the management plan for the field and forest. For that, a certain sharpness and courage is required. When I asked a number of German friends what their number one priority in selecting dogs for breeding was they replied "courage". I don't know of a single North American breeder of HPRs that would even place courage on his/her top ten list of priorities. Nor do I know any French, Italian, Dutch or Spanish breeders that even think about the courage aspect. Of course we don't want cowering surrender monkeys, but "courageous"? It is not even on the radar. And the courage the Germans are talking about goes beyond the willingness to tackle a fox or boar or badger. It extends to bad guys as well. As part of his forest management duties, a forester had to deal with poachers. And in some parts of Germany and eastern europe, poachers could be very bad apples indeed. There are quite a few cases on record of poachers actually murdering foresters (and foresters killing poachers in self defense). German literature from the 1800's and early 1900's is full of tales of brave foresters...and their dogs of course...protecting the forests, sometimes at the cost of their lives. A friend of mine in Germany told me that some of these foresters became legendary, like cowboys over here. There were novels, poems and songs written about them. And of course, there was always a dog at their side. So now there are a number of breeds that claim to be the "original forester's dog" and the sharpness test of the Weimaraner (the only breed to still have one) is a sort of historical left-over from evil poacher era.
A number of factors have to be considered when trying to figure out the strange lack of French HPR exports to the UK. Chief among them of course is history....particularly that of the period just after the second world war. From 1945 on, the allied powers began stationing hundreds of thousands of troops throughout germany. Vast numbers of them are still there today! The troops were young men, some of them keen hunters with an appreciation for dogs, and they were occupying a country populated by a broken and starving people...ready to sell just about anything for a meal, including their best dogs. By the early 1950's the situation was almost out of control. A number of clubs passed rules stating that no more than 50% of pups could be sold for export. Prior to that, almost every pup whelped was sold..mainly to America. In France on the other hand, there were no foreign troops occupying the country, no population reduced to selling its dogs. And that is one of the main reasons we don't see more french breeds in North America and the UK. There are other reasons of course, the French did not really do much to market their native breeds, preferring to import setters and pointers for example, but the main ones have to do with the amount of contact between the US, UK and Germany....before, during and after both world wars and the sort of love/hate relationship that has developed over the years.
You are probably thinking of the Braque Francais. There are two types, the small (pyrenees type) and the large (gascony type). The small type is far more numerous and popular than the larger. It does indeed look very much like a gsp and would make an excellent dog for english shooting sports. But the reason for its lack of popularity in the UK has nothing to do with its ability. There are some absolutely fantastic workers in the breed...indeed, I would even go so far as to say that for many hunters, the Braque Francais would be a better choice than the GSP. They are softer, a bit smaller, some are even faster than GSP's, there are NO issues of sharpness and they have loads of natural ability. But, due to the reasons given above, you are not likely to see any in the UK in the near future. Here are some photos of the breed http://www.clubbraquefrancais.com/champions/index.html and a video of training session with a nice female pup and a rather boorish pro trainer: http://www.kewego.it/video/iLyROoafYmn9.html |
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| guy |
That was useful to see - along with his training of EB. Hmmm. | ||||||||
| windem bang |
A very attractive breed of H.P.R. Had they been available here some years ago I would have bought one.
I can hardly believe that nobody has introduced this breed into Britain. I have a feeling that provided the first people to get around to bringing in this breed ensure that they bring in really good stock those people will do very nicely thankyou.
I first saw a photo of this breed nearly 25 years ago, I have often wondered about these dogs since then. Thanks very much for the pics and the film - I wasn't too keen on the handler either ! Bill T. |
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