French Brittany Information & Dog Breed Facts

Introduction

According to experts, Brittany’s history is separated into two periods: before 1907 and after 1907. It is quite simple to follow the breed’s progress since that year, however, before that it is almost impossible to get a clear picture of it.

Origins

The breed originates from a beautiful region of France known as Brittany, hence its name. However, in order to understand the development of its native breed of the pointing dog, it is necessary to consider how isolated the region was, and in some ways still is, from the rest of the nation.

La Bretagne (‘Brittany’) is a peninsula in the far western corner of the French hexagon. Its people have traditionally felt culturally isolated from the rest of the country. Breton, their native tongue, is a Celtic language linked to Welsh and Cornish, not a French variant.

Much of Brittany's people did not even speak, read, or write French until the turn of the century.

As a result, it's not surprising that few French texts discuss the types of dogs that existed in Brittany before 1900.

Fortunately, many of the British sportsmen who visited the region in the 1800s documented their experiences in articles and books. Reading over them today, a wonderful image of the dogs in mid-19th century Brittany emerges. One of the most extensive stories comes from George T. Lowth's book ‘The Wanderer in Western France’, published in 1863.

Short- and long-haired pointing dogs were "found everywhere" in Brittany, and according to Lowth: “In many villages, I saw specimens of a highly-bred shooting dog.

These were so like English Pointers, having the same fine head and eyes, and sinewy light frame”. Another classic book from the same era is ‘Wolf Hunting and Wild Sport in Brittany’, written in 1875 by Edward William Lewis Davies, who lived in Brittany for two years in the 1850s.

A Brittany pointer was mentioned in his writings, so some have taken this as the earliest mention of the Brittany Spaniel in English. He described hunting with small bobtailed dogs who pointed and were excellent retrievers.

Moreover, Davies also wrote about local hunters cropping the tails of their dogs which makes us think that maybe some of the dogs were naturally short-tailed, and it might have been a defining characteristic of the first Brittany dogs.

Furthermore, the above-mentioned English sportsmen who visited Brittany to hunt woodcock, took their well-trained Pointers, English, Irish, Gordon, and Llewellyn Setters with them. At the end of each shooting season, the dogs were often left behind with the local people until the next shooting season.

According to experts, it is commonly thought that the Brittany residents mated their white native spaniel type of dogs with the English pointers and setters, thus accounting for the variety of colors seen today in the majority of Brittany.

According to records, a Brittany was displayed and received a prize at the 1896 Paris exposition. Monsieur Patin's ‘Max de Callac’ was the first French champion, displayed in 1904.

When a French breed club was created in 1907, the breed received formal registration in France.

The 'Club de L'Epagneul Breton' is still in use today and in 1907, the first breed standard was made up in Nantes, France, and the club officially recognized it on the 7th of June, 1908.

History of the breed in post-war France

The popularity of Brittany expanded swiftly after World War I, but not without some growing pains. After the Brittanies began to win important field trials, French athlete Louis de Lajarrige wrote about what transpired.

He claimed that every hunter wanted one and because of this the breed started to be mass-produced, but their success was short-lived due to overzealous and uninformed breeders. Furthermore, the Brittany had crossed the Atlantic by the 1930s, when American sportsman Louis Thebaud, a breeder of Wirehaired Pointing Griffons, began importing them.

The Brittany Spaniel Club of North America was founded in 1936 by Thebaud and others. In 1942, a second club was founded in the United States, and the two clubs united in 1944 to form the American Brittany Club.

Between the two wars, breeders in France continued their efforts despite the difficult conditions. A popular misunderstanding about this period is that the breed nearly died out during the war years and was resurrected in the late 1940s with dogs imported from America.

However, Gaston Pouchain said that this was not the case and that American dogs played no significant influence in the resurgence of the breed.

Not much later, the Brittany has become the most popular gundog breed in France by the 1960s.

It was also gaining popularity in other parts of Europe and North America, where it quickly rose to become one of the most popular Continental pointing breeds on the field trial circuit.