The Brittany History Or How He Came to Be

Establishing the antiquity of a breed always seems to be a rather vain undertaking in more ways than one. It is, perhaps, the vanity of the owner who takes pride in the fact that his dog comes from one of the oldest known breeds. It is also vain in the meaning that if a breed is ancient at all, it is almost impossible to penetrate the mists of time and find the exact date when it was created.

Some students of the Brittany spaniel claim that it can point to greater antiquity than is commonly believed, and, indeed, offer rather substantial evidence. In a poem by Oppien, who lived about 150 A.D., there is a passage translated by Bellin de Ballu and found in the Strasburg Academic Library in 1787, which reads "among the animals who track-hunt there is an excellent kind, small, that are bred by the savage people of Brittany and are named Agasses, It is mostly by the sensitiveness of its scent that the Agasses takes precedence over other dogs." According to the travels of Oppien it is fairly well established that he referred to the Brittany of France and not the Brittany of England.

Be that as it may, no one knows exactly how or when the first Brittany spaniel was created. It is known, however, that the people of Brittany, that extension of France between the Bay of Biscay and the English Channel, had small local spaniels which excelled so at hunting that visiting sportsmen brought with them dogs of other breeds for mating with the "Epagneul Bretagne." One story is that M. de Mollon, a great French hunter, who came to the region of Coray to live, had Scotch terriers which he mated to the dogs of Brittany, their offspring having a good deal to do with the Brittany's ancestry. It is believed that an Irish setter, "pale in color," which had won a prize at the Paris Exhibition was brought to Brittany for the purpose of mating to the native dogs. There were, at the same time, matings to English dogs, probably English Setters, Welsh Springers, and Pointers.