How About a Side of Bullmastiff with Your Clumber?
Years ago, I asked Doug Johnson — famous as the only person to breed two Westminster Best in Show winners of different breeds — if there was a breed he would like to have bred that he hasn’t yet.
Without missing a beat, he responded: “Neapolitan Mastiff.”
That surprised me, but in retrospect, it shouldn’t have. Though Doug and his husband Jamie Hubbard have devoted themselves to Welsh Springer Spaniels, English Toy Spaniels and, most recently, Kooikerhondje (say that three times fast), Doug started in the sport — and continues to have great success with — Clumber and Sussex spaniels, which are the two breeds he so famously won with at the Garden.
And if you look at those two low-legged British spaniels, you’ll find a surprising number of Molosser characteristics: massive bone for their size; heavy, wrinkled skin; heavy brow; broad and relatively foreshortened muzzles; furrowed skulls; dewlaps; well-developed flews, and on and on.
Ch. Earlswood Rex, 1930s. This Sussex Spaniel head study clearly demonstrates some Molosser blood at play.
A couple of years ago, I was moderating a seminar on Clumber Spaniels for aspiring AKC judges. (“Moderating” means I made sure everyone signed in and didn’t play Candy Crush during the presentation.) Before things got underway, I introduced myself to the then-president of the Clumber Spaniel Club of America, who originally had Bullmastiffs. When I mentioned that I thought Clumbers might have some Molosser influence, he lit up in agreement, noting that the temperaments of the two breeds — one a stalker of men, the other of birds — were eerily similar. In particular, their love of the couch!
The Saint Bernard has in the past been suggested as a Clumber ancestor, as the caption below notes. But not just for its lemon or orange markings on a white base coat: From the thick, pendulous lips to the deep-set eye with some visible haw, there's a Molosser idiom here.
Clumber Spaniel Witley Acting Major in 1929 from Hutchinson Encyclopedia. "Many a Clumber bears the imprint of the St. Bernard dog which, history suggests, was partly its origins," read the caption. "Certainly a dog of the above type seems to lend credence to that theory."
The Clumber and Sussex are two short-legged spaniels whose Molosser attributes are readily visible, once you look for them. But they aren’t the only Sporting dogs that arguably benefitted from the infusion of a little Molosser sum’tin sum’tin along the way. They may just be the most obvious.
From Italy with Love
The Bracco Italiano is the most recent addition to the AKC Sporting Group, and the 200th breed recognized by the American Kennel Club.
As one of the oldest pointing breeds, its Molosser roots are not only widely accepted, but in fact celebrated.
Above: Female Bracco Italiano. Below: Bracco head study.
Most Bracco breed histories describe a cross to an ancient Molosser, such as the Asiatic Mastiff, though the details are sketchy, and probably over-romanticized. But one can glimpse the Molosser influence in the Bracco’s powerful bone, double dewlap and tough, ample skin. It’s mitigated by the insistence on sculpted smoothness throughout this breed — “lean” is used to describe the dog’s field condition as well as its limbs, cheeks, pasterns and foot pads.
In this respect, the Bracco is not unlike the Bloodhound, which also clearly had some Molosser in its background (and why that trailing hound was certainly used in the modern development of the Neapolitan Mastiff): In dog standards, leanness or narrowness, particularly of the head and muzzle, is synonymous with an aristocratic appearance. So the trick in both the Bracco and the Bloodhound is retaining the strength and bone contributed by their Molosser ancestors, while not sacrificing the long, lean head that gives them their noble expression.
Sleeping Bloodhound by Sir Edwin Landseer, 1835.
If there is Molosser in the smooth-coated Bracco, then the same applies to its very close cousin, the wire-coated Spinone Italiano, which is also required to have “powerful bone, but without lumber.”
Spinone Italiano, 1907.
As with the previously mentioned Bullie-loving Clumber owner, those who have experience with both Molossers and these Sporting dogs notice the similarities on a day-to-day, visceral level.
“I've often thought that Spinoni and Mastiffs go well together,” Bonnie Blink, a fancier who has owned both breeds, told me, adding that she sees parallels in the Spinone’s “bone and substance, the strong muzzle although not overdone, the deliberate gait, and the more steady temperament compared to many Sporting breeds.”
Show Us Some Leg!
During that same week of seminars in which I had my Clumber conversation, I was assigned to the Gordon Setter presentation. Closing my eyes in the seminar room, I could have been sitting among a bunch of mastiffs, so frequent were the snores and snorts.
The Gordon is the biggest and heaviest of the four setters — with “plenty of bone and substance,” “big-boned forelegs” and a “fairly heavy” head, the standard says, which suggest “strength and stamina rather than speed.” Like the Clumber and Sussex, the Gordon has large, round feet — another Molosser attribute, necessary for supporting all that mass.
In all these respects, the Gordon stands apart from the three other setters — English, Irish, and Irish Red and White — which are comparatively much more elegant and refined.
Gordon Setter, 1960s. The breed was created by the fourth Duke of Gordon in the late 1700s, most probably using Bloodhound crosses.
Just like his trademark black-and-tan coloration, that extra “oomph” described in the Gordon Setter standard had to come from somewhere. (My guess would be the Bloodhound, which would also contribute the black-and-tan pattern.)
When I read a standard, I pay special attention to the description of the rearquarter proportions. If a standard asks for a long first thigh, my Molosser bell goes ding-ding-dinging: That means the body is relatively heavy for its size, requiring a longer, more vertical femur to keep the angulation restrained and the rear assembly under the body.
You have to dig for it, but the Gordon Setter standard describes just that: “When the dog is standing with the rear pastern perpendicular to the ground, the thighbone hangs downward parallel to an imaginary line drawn upward from the hock.”
Vertical thigh = long upper thigh = Molosser structure.
Now, please don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying any of these Sporting breeds are Molossers. But what I am saying is that they have some characteristics that are not commonly found in other Sporting breeds, but which are very much Molosser calling cards.
Way Out There
There are arguably other Molosser influences in the Sporting Group — and virtually all the other variety groups as well — though they've been diluted over the centuries, if not millennia.
In the Working Group, for example, some Molosser blood was clearly introduced to create the Alaskan Malamute: Spitz breeds simply do not have that size, substance or muzzle strength in their genome. Since we know trading expeditions into Siberia had been going on for centuries, I’d lay my money on the Central Asian Shepherd. (It has a disqualification for blue eyes, just like the Malamute. Coincidence?)
The Alaskan Malamute, with its powerful build and "bulky" muzzle, is a likely candidate for having some Molosser influence overwhelm the spitz tendency for smaller size.
In a less obvious example, I’ve often wondered about the Australian Shepherd, whose origins are so obscured no one can really figure out exactly what breeds went into creating it. But some dog historians theorize that descendants of the Alaunt or Alano, brought to the American Southwest by Spanish Conquistadors, made up part of that mysterious formula. And the Aussie is quite different from the other traditional collie-type breeds in its heavier (but still moderate) bone and plusher muzzle.
Does the Australian Shepherd (above) have the Spanish Alano (below) as an ancestor? The jury is out.
Crazy? Possibly. If these influences existed, today they are so faint as to be practically non-existent. But exploring the possibilities reminds us that the Molossers are not just a group of imposing guardians, set aside and cordoned off. They were — and arguably still are — an important component in the evolution of many of our purebred dogs, even if that metaphorical presence — like their literal one — exists in pure, contemplative silence.