A Founding Father and his American Foxhounds By George:
By Denise Flaim
Undated photo shows a man and an American Foxhound surrounded by awards.
from all seven AKC variety groups: Sporting (pointers and spaniels), Non-Sporting
T hough we often don’t think about them in this way, dogs are really about people — those long-ago (or, sometimes, not so long-ago) figures who developed particular breeds for particular tasks. Some breeds — like the Doberman Pinscher, Teddy Roosevelt Terrier, and Cesky Terrier — owe their existence to just one visionary person. Other breeds were brought into being by specific cultures or classes of people. If civilization is the intersection of a group of people with their environment, so too are their dogs: With coats that evolved to survive the local climate, body styles developed to navigate native terrains, and characters that fit into the social mores of the day, our purebred dogs are living, breathing moments of history, reflections of the far-flung cultures that developed and nurtured them. Through them, we rediscover our globe’s cultural diversity and heritage. Each week, without even leaving our couches, we travel to a different place and time to meet the people who developed the snoozing bundles of fur at our sides. *** When American colonists declared their independence from Great Britain almost 250 years ago, they realized they needed a new form of governance, a new
monetary system, and a new national identity.
(Dalmatians, including a particularly amorous one named Madame Moose), Toy (Italian Greyhounds), Terrier (he called them “tarriers”), Herding (Briards), Working (Mastiffs and Newfoundlands) and, of course, Hound – his own strain of black-and-tan English Foxhounds, said to have descended from those of Brooke a century earlier. In his writings, Washington mused about how to improve his pack, which he called “Virginia Hounds.” He hoped to breed “a superior dog, one that had speed, sense, and brains” – not coincidentally, the same qualities needed for their human corollaries to succeed in the New World.
Some also decided they had to have a new foxhound, too.
Dogs have always been part of the American experience, accompanying the very first Englishmen to the New World in the form of a Mastiff and spaniel aboard the Mayflower. In short order, hounds followed. In 1650, Maryland-bound settler Robert Brooke arrived with his family, 28 servants, and a pack of hounds. Imported with these British breeds was a sporting passion for hunting fox on horseback. But the English Foxhound, with his relatively heavy bone, was built for a hedgerow-dotted countryside – not the vast expanses of this new American experiment, where the vistas were seemingly as limitless as the nascent nation’s prospects. A faster hound was needed, one able to move with greater speed and cover more ground. “Virginia Hounds” One of the first Americans to realize this was also our first president: A devoted breeder and fox hunter, George Washington kept dozens of dogs his Mount Vernon home, inspecting his kennels at the beginning and end of each day. Over his lifetime, Washington owned breeds
Missouri Pet Breeders Association | Page 47
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