Henry Chappell - Working Dogs of Texas

From Part I - The Hunters:

  The American Kennel Club classifies purebred dogs that locate, point, retrieve, and flush feathered and furred game as “Sporting Breeds,” an unfortunate misnomer that ignores the breeds’ origins and purposes and the true nature of hunting.
  True, most modern hunters go afield for the pleasure of time spent outdoors among friends and dogs, and, hopefully, a fine meal of wild game afterward. And most of the pointing breeds, and their scent hound and spaniel progenitors, were developed by Medieval European nobility and later refined in Europe and North America by bourgeois sportsmen. Yet, hunting dogs literally put food on the table of American families from Colonial times through World War II. Even today, pointing dogs, retrievers, hounds, and the various types of curs and feists continue to work for rural folks who look upon hunting as an essential part of their household economy.
  To relegate hunting dogs to mere sport or amusement is to strip them of the dignity of their primary purpose – hunting for food.
The dogs deserve more, as do the men and women devoted to nurturing, improving, and honoring these essential working traits.
  In a sense, hunting dogs are the original working dogs.

Working Dogs of Texas

Badlands Design and Production (2009)

ISBN 978-0-9840630-0-0 - $60.00 (hardcover)

Click here to order

In 1541, when Francisco Coronado crossed the Texas Panhandle, he discovered along the Canadian River curious parallel ruts ranging eastward across the prairie. Following these traces, he encountered a buffalo hunting people, mostly likely early Apaches, using powerful, wolf-like dogs to drag loads of hides and other camp burdens on travois formed of lodge poles.

Today, you look at that versatile, non-descript, prick-eared dog that, with no formal training, trees squirrels, catches groundhogs, kills rattlesnakes, helps load and corral livestock, and howls bloody murder whenever a strange car comes up the lane, and think, "A shepherd mix of some sort." No doubt, you'd be right, but there may well be something there from a time when two hunting cultures looked at each other's dogs and wondered if their bloodlines could be improved by a bit of indigenous blood or by crossing with one of those big yellow curs that suddenly seem to be everywhere.

Types of Canis familiaris don't go extinct as much as they adapt to changing environments and the needs and whims of their fellow travelers, those versatile omnivores who come in a range of sizes and colors, who have thus far adapted to every climate on earth.

Find one and you'll find the other.

Kathryn Hunter reviews Working Dogs of Texas in Texas Parks & Wildlife December 2009