The “true Newfoundland dog”

Perhaps the longest running controversy in the dog fancy and in later dog histories is what the true Newfoundland dog actually was.

Several people, among them the Labrador retriever historian and retriever trainer Richard Wolters, have claimed that the large Newfoundland dog that became very common throughout Europe and North America during the nineteenth century was not the dog that the settlers and fishermen of Newfoundland kept for their own use on the sea and in the forests of the interior.

In this scenario, the big Newfoundland and the Landseer, which is recognized as a separate breed in the FCI countries, were developed for the pet trade from the smaller working dogs of Newfoundland, which we now call the St. John’s water dog. The big dogs were developed through cross-breeding with mastiffs of some sort and then selectively breeding for larger size.

This scenario is far from orthodox, and those who make this claim are generally in retrievers, not modern Newfoundlands. It is very common to come across a claim that the large Newfoundland descends from mastiffs that were brought to Newfoundland when the Norse established a colony there.

Of course, such a claim is very dubious. The big problem with this theory is that there are no dog breeds native to Newfoundland until after Columbus. There have been dogs that have been found at prehistoric archaelogical sites, but none of these dogs trace to the Beothuk people, who were the only people living in Newfoundland at the time when Europeans first arrived. If any Norse dogs remained, they would have had to have been kept by the Beothuk.  But they didn’t keep dogs.  There is some evidence that they had a relationship with wolves that bordered on semi-domestication (see Whitbourne’s account), but there is no evidence in the historical record or in the archaeological findings that these people kept dogs. Some have claimed that those wolves were like Inuit dogs of some sort, but there is no evidence of Inuit-type dogs on Newfoundland that were alive at the time of the Beothuk period. I think it’s just better to say that these were semi-domesticated wolves– and not dogs in the conventional sense.

There is some evidence of later European peoples bringing mastiffs to Newfoundland, but their purpose was more of the conventional mastiff guard dog. which was something that one would need in a wild frontier country.  Some of these mastiffs were likely of the bulldog-type, which means they could be used to catch game and control livestock. However, there is no mastiff native to Europe that is a water dog, and none are very good in cold water.

Further, a big dog like a mastiff or a modern Newfoundland is going to eat a lot of food, but most accounts of Newfoundland dogs suggest that they were fed scraps from the fishing plants and the remains of game that their owners shot in the interior.  And during the months when the dogs weren’t needed for fishing, they were allowed to roam and feed themselves.  Although these dogs proved to be capable sheep-killers, I doubt they were that good at hunting caribou, which were the only large ungulates native to Newfoundland until moose were introduced in 1904.  It would be very hard for a very large dog to maintain itself on such rations.

A giant dog might have a lot more power to pull and haul, but it also might not be able to thrive  in such conditions.

That’s why it seems logical that the giant Newfoundland was actually a creation of the nineteenth century pet trade and dog fancy.

However, there is next to no historical evidence to confirm the theory that the St. John’s was the original Newfoundland, but I did find something interesting. I came across this letter to The Country magazine that was published on 4 April 1876. The author, who is identified as “P,” is a retriever breeder who has kept a line of retrievers that descend from the “true old breed” that his grandfather brought over from St. John’s:

My attention has been called to a letter in your paper of March 30, from “Norman Nemo,” respecting Newfoundland dogs. Did “Norman Nemo” ever see a true-bred Newfoundland dog? I have been in St. John’s much, and know it is difficult in that place to get one of the original breed of dogs. The dogs we call Newfoundland dogs are no more like the true old breed of Newfoundland than an English thoroughbred horse is to his Eastern ancestor. The original Newfoundland dog was a dog about the size of an ordinary setter; his head was very broad across the forehead; small sharp ears close to the head; muzzle short; nose small and sharp; good strong teeth; body compact; coat smooth and thick, almost always black, sometimes a shade of brindle; strong legs, and feet large, long, and flat, and when walking spread—in fact, anything but a handsome dog. All the native dogs (if I may use the term) of North America have the same type. The Indian dogs are small, and have the same formation of head.

The Newfoundland dog was used for dragging sledges by the fishermen on tho ooast, taking tho cod fish from the shore to the curing houses. They were wonderfully hardy, preferring to sleep out of doors all seasons and live on the offal from the cod. My grandfather was quartered at St. John’s many years ago; he brought home a Newfoundland bitch, of the true breed. He bought her from an old fisherman, who told him there wero very few of the original breed left even then. There was nothing very remarkable about Flora; she was, I recollect, rather cross, but was an excellent water dog, and retrieved well. Nothing would induoe her to sleep indoors, neither would she be tied up; in fact, like the white bear in the Zoo, she seemed to delight in ice and snow. We bred from her, and I have by my side now one of her breed, a very grand dog, indeed, the improved English Newfoundland. I have also a dog I got in St. John’s when last there; but all doge bought in Newfoundland are not Newfoundland dogs. The people there have improved their breed also.

Your correspondent, “Norman Nemo,” seems to have a great dislike to educated dogs. He would prefer “a handsome dog to the more highly educated dog, or one that proved himself most clever or tricky.” Well, I suppose if ”Norman Nemo” goes in for dogs that are only bred for the show bench, he is right: but what is the use of these prize dogs? I have been a dog breeder and owner all my life, and admire a handsome dog as much as “Norman Nemo,” but I would not keep a dog an hour merely because he was good-looking. I endeavour to obtain the breed o£ dog—whether retriever, setter, pointer, or hound—that is moat easily educated; in fact, that will take to their work almost without education. If they are dull, lazy, and give trouble— no matter how good-looking they are—I get rid of the brutes. They are not worth their keep, unless for the show bench, and I do not go in for that sort of thing, though I am sure I have dogs that would please even “Norman Nemo,” but they are educated. The dog now by my side—a descendant from Flora—is uncommonly tricky. I hardly ever lose a bird either on land or water. I have known him follow a winged black cock [black grouse] through thick under-brush and heather for more than a mile, and bring it without hurting a feather. He takes after his northern ancestors in his love of water and his disregard to cold, but he has improved upon the old lady’s temper.

I must apologise for writing so long a letter, but when on a doggy subject I hardly know where to stop. I could fill a good sized book with dog stories—incidents that have come under my own eye—and perhaps I may some day tip you a yarn or two.

So the original old breed of Newfoundland was like a St. John’s water dog, not like a shaggy mastiff with the temperament of a retriever.

The notion that these dogs were of native ancestry should be taken with a grain of salt, but the natives of New England did have dogs that were of some use as retrievers, as did the Mi’kmaq, who eventually settled in Newfoundland at the insistence of the French. There is an account of Indians in New England using dogs to retrieve ducks from their canoes. This account makes no mention of the exact people who are using the dogs, but they could have been the Abenaki. The Abenaki and the Mi’kmaq are both Algonquin peoples who were also part of the Wabanaki Confederacy. Wabanaki refers to a large area of the northeastern part of North America in both the United States and Canada that was home to these Algonquin peoples.

The account describing the indigenous retrievers of eastern North America goes as follows:

Once the harvests of the field were safely in, the Indian [men], old and young, could turn to hunting, since the flesh animals and fowl would then spoil less readily. Morning and evening were the times for ducks and geese. Following well-known flyways, these birds settled at night in river meadows and salt marshes or rested at ease on smooth water. The hunters would drift in quietly in canoes, light torches to cause sudden confusion among the birds, and knock them down with clubs or paddles. Then a specially trained canoe dog, sitting in the bow,  would jump into the water and retrieve the game.

Howard S. Russell Indian New England Before the Mayflower(1980) p. 178-179. *I edited one word to make it sound a little less ethnocentric.

It is possible that this sort of dog is in the St. John’s water dog’s ancestry, but I also think that it is primarily derived from European stock, which included curs, water dogs, and guard dogs from several European countries, including Portugal. (Wolters discounted any Portuguese ancestry in the dogs, but I think this is in error. He felt that Portugal and English sailors and fishermen never would have met each other because they fished different parts of Newfoundland, but Portugal and England were never enemies. They were fellow Europeans, and in such a harsh environment, they had to have relied upon each other at some point. It is likely they engaged in friendly trade with each other, as ships from foreign nations do when not at war.)

I did however come across this photo of a Native American dog from either Eastern Canada or New England retrieving a rabbit. It looks like a black coyote, but it has a very Labradorish expression in its eyes. If it had possessed drop ears that were a bit smaller in size, I think we would be calling this animal an early Labrador retriever or a St. John’s water dog. It is built very similarly to the St. John’s breed, but it is just a touch smaller.

Some texts refer to this animal as a “retrieving wolf,” but it is not a wolf at all. It’s a retrieving Native American dog.

No genetic studies have ever revealed any indigenous ancestry in the retrievers or the big Newfoundland dog. However, it may be revealed someday that they do have a little indigenous ancestry, something I would also expect to find in curs and feists.

But it does seem to me much more logical that the St. John’s water dog, the proto-retriever, was actually the original Newfoundland dog.

However, it also means that when we see the word “Newfoundland” used to describe a dog in the eighteenth century and the earlier parts of the nineteenth century– especially in North America, we need to caution ourselves about assuming that the dog they were referring to was the giant Newfoundland. It very well might have been, but it is much more likely that it would have been something more like a Labrador retriever.