The Lurcher: August 2012

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THE DOMESDAY BOOK OF DOGS

The Lurcher.

   "For messenger dogs the following breeds should be asked for: sheepdogs, collies, drovers' dogs, lurchers and all crosses of the above..." "Lurchers and lurcher crosses are very wise dogs, and train well".
BRITISH WAR DOGS THEIR TRAINING AND PSYCHOLOGY
Lt-Colonel E.H Richardson, 1920

"...this is the very race of dogs applicable to the wants of the poacher; in fact they are so admirably adapted to the universality of the system and the services required, that no breed of the whole species seems so peculiarly calculated for the whole purpose: they equal, if not exceed, any other dog in sagacity, and are easily taught any thing that it is possible for an animal of this description to acquire by instruction. Some of the best-bred lurchers are but little inferior in speed to the greyhound; rabbits they kill to a certainty..."
The Sportsman's Cabinet and Town and Country Magazine. (1833, p106).

   Technically speaking a lurcher is the product of any sighthound crossed with any non-sighthound but as there are such a myriad of suitable breeds it is perhaps inevitable that most people have their own favourite breeds for lurcherising. On top of this, lurcher work is so varied that crosses that excel at one task may not necessarily be too good at another kind of work. Collie x greyhound, Bedlington terrier x greyhound or saluki x greyhound are three very popular hybrids. Even the examples given are a slight over-simplification as hare coursers, for instance, may ameliorate greyhound blood with saluki, losing a little speed perhaps but increasing the hybrid's stamina or if those same hare coursers favour particularly tall dogs they may cross greyhounds with deerhounds in order to give the hybrid some added height. At the other end of the spectrum ferreters may prefer under twenty inch lurchers, usually whippet x terrier crosses or whippet x border collie.

   According to Scott (1820, p95) the original Lurchers were greyhound x sheepdog or greyhound/sheepdog x greyhound and usually yellow and white in colour. Scott was describing lurchers up to the start of the nineteenth century whereas nowadays, however, it's definitely a case of 'horses for courses' where lurchers are concerned. In an attempt to shed some light on the whole hotchpotch certain collective names have arisen for different types of lurcher:

Bred-down Grew. Whippet x greyhound cross (may run to several generations, e.g. whippet/greyhound x whippet; whippet/greyhound/whippet x whippet).

Bull Lurchers. Mastiff-type x greyhound. Formerly called 'strong greyhounds'. Large, lithe dogs.

Collie Cur. This is the name given to the progeny of a lurcher x collie.

Coney Dog. Term sometimes given to a small lurcher or tumbler. In the north of England this may be a Bedlington terrier x Whippet. Coney is a middle English term for rabbit.

First Cross. Term used for the original hybrid. e.g. Collie x greyhound; Bedlington terrier x greyhound; saluki x deerhound etc. In verbal descriptions the 'x' (meaning 'by' or 'cross') may be dropped thus: 'collie greyhound'; 'Bedlington greyhound'; 'saluki deerhound' etc.

Kanniechor. Romany for 'chicken thief'. Kenniechors are born rather than trained and they are adept at taking fowl unobserved and returning them live to their master. The dog would wander through the farmyard with its owner, seemingly oblivious to any livestock milling around, but his owner would surreptitiously touch or nudge one of the game fowl so common on farms in the past, and a couple of miles down the lane, or later that evening, he would send the dog back to the farm where it would seek out and snaffle the marked individual. The Kanniechor would then return to his master to deliver his ill-gotten gains live to hand. These dogs are usually collie-blooded on both sides of the cross.

Longdog. Occasionally 'Long Dog'. This would be a cross between two different breeds of sighthound. The Strathdoon Dingo Killer was a hybrid between Borzoi and Deerhound.

Mini-lurchers. There are a few hunters who swear by a whippet-sized or sometimes even smaller lurcher as they may be adept at snapping up rat and rabbit, working to ferrets or even excellent companions during hunting expeditions with air weapons. They could be based on whippet or occasionally Italian greyhound, usually crossed with Bedlington terrier, border collie or mongrel. However Plummer, 1984, said "Frankly, there is little one can say in favour of small lurchers for a good coursing whippet with a lot of fire in its veins will do anything a small lurcher will do and have a 'sight more' dash and speed besides."

Norfolk Lurcher. Originally crosses between Smithfield collies and greyhounds, these dogs tend to be broken-coated or long haired; they are seldom, if ever, smooth-coated. They're usually good all-rounders and enthusiastic hunters. Nowadays they are regarded as the ideal lurcher. As the Smithfield is now extinct the hybrid can be replicated to a certain extent by the use of (working) bearded collie blood. e.g. bearded collie/border collie x greyhound; bearded collie/greyhound x greyhound. Emphasis is made of the 'working' bearded collie because they tend to be suspicious of strangers, which is a trait to be appreciated in lurchers. 'Show' bearded collies have been bred to be so hirsute that one has to wonder if they might ball-up in snow.

Reverse three-quarters. This name is given to the offspring of a mating where a first cross of authenticated ancestry is back-crossed to the non-sighthound component; usually collie x collie/greyhound.

Sapling. A young lurcher, out of puppyhood but still too juvenile or immature to be regarded as an adult. Roughly ranging from six months to about two years.

Snap dog. This dog was originally a poacher's dog of the eighteenth century and was described as a greyhound cross or mongrel greyhound, Pegge, 1896 (compiled by the two Drs Pegge who had both died by 1800), Gardeners' Chronicle 1844, Hinchcliffe 1856, Deadfall 1886, Evans 1881. The term later became a synonym for whippet which might imply that the snap dog was a small lurcher and the ancestor of the whippet.

Staghound. This is the term for a tall lurcher or longdog, and should not be confused with the now extinct English pack hound of that name. See American Staghound.

Strong greyhounds. Old term for what would nowadays be called a bull lurcher.

Super-saturated Lurcher. A hybrid with very little non-sighthound blood. Usually produced by crossing a strain of lurcher back to greyhound for several generations

Teazer (teaser). Very old term for a greyhound crossbreed employed to flush (or tease) deer out of woods or coverts. Once flushed into the open the deer were then coursed by waiting greyhounds. Worlidge, 1717, provides an account of how coursing deer in a large paddock would be undertaken (n.b. for flip and flipt in the text read slip and slipped).

Three-quarter bred. E.g. Greyhound/collie x greyhound; greyhound/Bedlington Terrier x greyhound etc. N.b. The laws of probability tell us that any individual is unlikely to have a ratio of exactly 75% / 25%, these fractions could only be expected to be accurate when averaged out across many litters.

Tumbler. Norfolk tumbler. Small lurchers are sometimes erroneously referred to as tumblers. Not entirely impossible that they could be tumblers, but the real tumbler caught his prey by stealth and subterfuge rather than speed. A tumbler may also cavort gambol and frolic to distract the prey, with the dog edging ever closer, until the quarry could be caught unawares with a swift pounce. They might even be used to entice waterfowl to swim into a duck decoy by their antics. When guns became more accurate the tumbler could be used to arouse the curiosity of the game and to draw it within reach of the hunter's gun. The ideal colour for a tumbler used as a duck decoy was fox-red. The Gentleman's Recreation (1686, p37/38) gives the following description: "these dogs are somewhat less than hounds being lanker, leaner and somewhat prick-eared. By the form and fashion of their bodies they must be called mongrel-greyhounds, if they were somewhat bigger."

Whippet. Quite possibly a by-product of terrier racing. Terrier racing was a popular working class sport that dates from at least the beginning of the nineteenth century. To speed up their strains of terrier the participants would outcross to the greyhound. They'd choose the smallest bitch from the progeny and this would now be their brood bitch for further terrier matings. These three-quarter bred terriers by one-quarter greyhound would be introduced into the terrier races and, of course, into future breeding regimes. This craze for terrier racing has been cited as the origin of both the whippet and the Manchester terrier. What might possibly be an early reference to the development of the whippet comes from The Sportsman's Directory; or, The Gentleman's Companion: for Town And Country (1785), which gives the following definition 'TERRIER. A kind of mongrell greyhound, used chiefly for the fox or badger; so called because he creeps into the ground...' A Lurcher or a whippet might well be described as a 'mongrel greyhound' (from the modern point of view), but not a terrier. There are also definitions of both the lurcher and the tumbler in the book but, could it be that the 'Best Authors' and 'Experienced Gentlemen' who compiled the book may not have been familiar with working class favourites. If the whippet did exist at the turn of the nineteenth century then for a few decades it would have been contemporaneous with the wappet, a nondescript, or any other small dog, that was used as a noisy watchdog. As regarding the wappet, North America had a similar type of nondescript, or cur, known as a whiffet.

The idea behind the lurcher was originally to develop a dog that was fast, and intelligent enough to catch food for the pot. For this reason lurchers have often been looked on with disapproval by those in authority. As the population in Britain became steadily more affluent, and fewer families were on the breadline, the tasks required of the Lurcher changed to some extent and they were adapted to coursing hares (originally the job of the coursing greyhound), and lurchers also became the companions of artisan hunters, men who stayed outdoors 'lamping' rabbits on freezing cold nights out of choice and not because their families were in immediate danger of starvation. Generally speaking Hugh Dalziel's rather poeti c description of the Collie/Greyhound rings as true today as it did in 1879: "Steady at heel or keeping watch at the stile till the wire is in the meuse and the net across the gate; then a motion of the hand, and, without a whimper, he is round the field, driving rabbit and hare into the fatal snare." The wire snare would be expected to catch the first animal that tried to escape the field without exiting under the gate. The gate net should catch every animal that hit the net. A meuse (or muse) is an opening at the base of a hedge or fence through which a hare or other animal is accustomed to pass.

Lurchers have a history of several hundred years but 'lamping' as mentioned above is a relatively new occupation and it's an easier way to capture game; no setting up of gate nets, no toiling through the dark, moonless night setting up a long net after a suspicious gamekeeper may have strewn the field with thorny branches. Lamping is simple and most lurcher owners try their hand at some point. All the equipment required is a motorbike battery (carried in a ruck-sack) and lamp with a switch. The lamp is swept around the field for a few yards ahead of the hunter and game such as rabbits may, or may not, be transfixed in the beam. As lamping is practised after dark it's likely the rabbits will be feeding well away from their holes and the dog is simply slipped after a well-lit rabbit. Slip leads are not absolutely necessary as dogs could be held by the collar. The dog runs along the beam, overtakes the rabbit and brings it back to the hunter. Rabbits that hunker down on the spot rather than running for safety are known as squatters. Picking up squatters is something of an art but older dogs usually get the idea. In fact older dogs are usually more successful at lamping than younger, perhaps more skittish dogs. All types of game can be lamped but the commonest tend to be rabbits or pheasants. Vermin controllers may lamp foxes or even rats. Deer too are sometimes lamped and hunted down with pairs of lurchers, but this is frowned on as the tussle is often barbarically cruel.

Lurchers make excellent pets. They also keep their owners fit as they enjoy plenty of daily exercise. The basic idea behind any hybrid of course is to achieve maximum heterosis, or hybrid vigour. This hybrid vigour coupled with a sympathetic training regime can result in a highly efficient hunting team as man and dog eventually gel. One way the poachers of old would realise their ideal lurcher would be to take a puppy at, say, five weeks old. Food and drink was then given straight from the poacher's cupped palms, and any training would be treated as a game. A very short game as the puppy couldn't be allowed to become bored. This training regime would be enacted for a short time each and every day. Anyone contemplating training their own lurcher with a view to living off the land could do worse than read Dogwatching by Desmond Morris, and The Complete Lurcher by D. Brian Plummer.

There is a very good axiom when breeding lurchers and that is to always mate a lurcher to a greyhound, nevertheless many lurchers hail from lurcher x lurcher matings. This type of mating can produce a considerable amount of litter-wastage and, of course, a whole host of lurchers of 'pedigree unknown'; this situation, coupled with the fact that many lurchers change owners frequently, results in a lot of dogs on the market where the ancestry is merely guessed at.

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