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Early Days in America’s Dogs

by Fred Lanting, International All-Breed Judge, SAAB Member

Most versions of America's first purebred dogs are after-the-fact but Mr. Lanting, world-renowned dog show judge, is of an age to share first-hand canine history.

The most valid canine histories are those recorded by the people who lived with and observed dogs. Such a record is called a “living history,” whether in spoken or written form.

For this piece on early history of the dog (the original version of which I wrote in the late 1980s) I tried to choose interviewees with varied backgrounds and geographical locations. Even so and somewhat surprisingly, their recollections of what dogs were like in the early 1900s were quite similar. Perhaps it is because the game of dog showing didn’t take off with the middle class until the mid-1950s.

Let’s hear about those early days from a real “dogman,” veterinarian and dog show judge, John Martin of Indiana, who said that there were not many dog shows in the country when he was a lad. Hoosier Kennel Club was one of the earliest participants in that purebred dog activity. Sometimes different groups (bird dogs, terriers, hounds, etc.) would be exhibited on different days. The dog show events were held much like those for sheep and cattle. Show dogs were not “popular” even in the limited-to-the-wealthy sense until the 1920s, when John Martin saw many dog breeds that have waxed and waned in popularity.

In 1904 John Martin’s father got his first Bull Terrier, a breed with cropped ears and a different appearance than today. Percy Bunker, an Indiana scrap-metal dealer, had eight or nine white Bull Terrier bitches and he liked young John, whose favorite breed was the Staffordshire Bull Terrier (some of these were white in those days, too).

This photo of a white Bull Terrier, mourning the loss of his owner General Patton, made the breed famously popular.

Interestingly, some colored Staffordshire Bull Terriers were used to combat deafness in white Bull Terriers, an indication that so-called breed purity was regarded a little differently back then. In those days and into the 1920s, $75 was an astounding price for a pup.

Most dogs judge John Martin saw were identifiable breeds but many were without “papers” (registrations) because very few people could afford that luxury. There was as high a quality of Smooth Fox Terriers on Midwestern farms as could be found in any of England’s best show dogs and they seldom went for more than $10 for a bitch or $15 for a dog.

The Rockefellers were into Bedlington Terriers and given their family control of the American Kennel Club (now simply called AKC) it was natural for that breed to be favored by other moneyed people and judges.

John Rockefeller had dogs enroute to a dog show one time when the railroad put dogs off the train to make room for fresh oysters. The wealthy tycoon responded by sending an engine and one rail car just so the dogs could make it to the show on time.

Wealthy dog owners and businessmen paid farmers to raise Airedales for them; the dogs were good hunters and sold for $40 with registrations.

Hundreds of miles to the south, near the Tennessee River in northern Alabama, my neighbor Lee Barnard, born in 1908, was, in the late 1980s, still farming and keeping a few dogs. He said some people trained dogs “for the rich people” such as doctors. Caretakers kept them, and when the wealthier people’s friends visited, they’d all go out to the farm to get the dogs and go hunting.

Barnard said about half of those field dogs were Pointers and Setters but all were loosely called “shooting dogs.” The Pointers were shorthaired and white with brown spots. Setters had longer coats, often reddish or speckled. Not much different from today, right?

The ordinary people on the farms liked the close-working style of Pointer and Setter dogs because they hunted for food or fur and could not afford to miss any shots; shells (like everything else store-bought) were expensive. In those days, if the average person couldn’t make, catch, grow, or trade for something, he did without.

Lee Barnard liked coonhounds, some the black and tan type, others marked like foxhounds. These dogs helped put food on the table or they wouldn’t have been kept. The hounds also hunted rabbits which ran in a big circle back to where the farmer/hunter would be waiting.

While a trained bird dog would sell for a sheik’s ransom of $150 to $250, a trained coonhound could fetch $50 to $75 which was a big price for a farmer. The poor people not hired by the rich had their own “possum dogs” or any cur or “feist dog” that could tree a squirrel or other food for the table. Most feists were of a general terrier type.

Annie, Lee’s wife, born in 1903, remembered Redbones and other coonhounds and says dogs lived on cornbread and meat scraps with any other leftovers. No dog food was commercially available.

Annie's daddy would take dogs out and stay gone for a week at a time, fishing and hunting fox, raccoons, wild boars and other game. He sold the hides but hunted mainly for food and the enjoyment of being with the dogs. In those days there seemed not to be as many loose or stray dogs. When city folks did have dogs, they typically would be rich ladies with dogs on leashes.

In those early days in America, a young boy named George Rood, later to become a famous professional handler and then an AKC all-breeds dog show judge, encountered many Beagles and coonhounds such as the Redbone. The rest he remembers seeing as "hunting dogs" were mixed breed hounds.

Most of these American blends had longish coats and were not quite as large as today’s German Shepherd Dog. George Rood says he’s seen a “terrible change” in German Shepherds since the early days because people are breeding more for the show ring than for any useful function. Back then, he says, only the rich had show dogs and George did not run in those circles.

Pictured is Roy Rogers and his German Shepherd Dog Bullet, his famous co-star. The “pure” German Shepherds of those days were known as “police dogs,” indicating that even in America the breed was known for more than herding sheep.

In West Virginia, World War One veteran Bill Cook (my father-in-law) recalled that there was no exposure to dog shows and very little emphasis on AKC registration among the common man. Dogs were not of any “pure” nature unless individuals purposely kept their own “bloodlines.” Most people who didn’t use dogs for hunting food simply didn’t have a dog.

Bill’s wife, Patty, grew up in West Virginia, and she says the old “shepherd dogs” looked a little like today’s Collies and that most dogs in town were mixed: some Fox Terrier types, some “Eskimo spitz” types. She knew about coonhounds but the general population didn’t pay much attention to them because the hunters went out at night and put the dogs up during the day.

Lest anyone think all Americans back then were farmers or lived in rural areas, I’ll close with a reminiscence closer to my former home, the Northeast. Living in town for pre-teen Tessie Bangma, the oldest of six children born to an immigrant Dutch couple, was a fairly typical American experience.

Because there were few automobiles, dogs were in little danger of traffic. They ran loose and came home to eat. Tessie remembers small mutts of no particular lineage but her mother loved dogs (a trait she passed on to at least one grandson, me) and she got the family’s first dog, a mixed-breed, just as the war began.

A few years later they obtained their first purebred, an Airedale named Bessie and the die was cast. My mother said the love of dogs seems to skip every other generation, and I guess she might be right.

For more real-life dog information by Fred Lanting, read The Dog That Could Not Swim

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