Pointer Origins

Origins of English Pointers

During this period there had evolved in Spain a rather different kind of pointer, a large, heavy, and lumbering dog, immortalised in the painting by Stubbs. Again there is a lot of evidence that these dogs, evolved in Spain by cross-breeding from the original dogs introduced into Spain from Italy in the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries. A somewhat similar dog was produced in Navarre and there must have been a very close link between these two types which were very similar in conformation. At the same time the smaller, swifter, pointer was quite as common in Spain as the so-called Spanish Pointer.

In the early part of the eighteenth century came the War of the Spanish Succession and this ended with the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. British officers returning from this war are thought to have imported the first pointers into England, a thing that returning troops seem to have done down the ages. There is a painting in the Chatsworth collection dated 1713 showing two pointers belonging to Lord Burlington by Alexandre Desportes. These were the lighter type of Continental pointer. Desportes is known to have visited England in this year and he had already painted the pictures of the dogs belonging to the King of France. Similar dogs appear in the painting by Tillemans, dated 1725, of the pointers of the Duke of Kingston. He was a great Francophile and must have introduced his dogs into England about this date.

Although there is this evidence that the ancestors of the present English Pointer were introduced from France in this way, there remains the fact that the English word derives from the Spanish de punta, and also that many dogs bore the Spanish names, for example, Sancho, Don, and Pero. And in early times of the eighteenth century the pointer was clearly associated with Spain in the minds of sporting writers; for example, the following appeared in the Gentleman Farrier 1732: "The Spanish Pointer is esteemed the incomparable, and even without teaching will point naturally at a partridge, and as he is large, will range and will stand high enough above the stubble."  <% Case "firearms" %>