SC - Three Questions (one of them oop)

[Decker, Terry D.]

Greetings from Elizabeth,

On Mon, 30 Nov 1998, Shari Burnham wrote:
> Speaking of greyhounds, what other dogs would be typical in a Medieval
> household?  I had someone tell me about bull mastiffs as war dogs, but what
> about what I think of as typical hunting dogs today: hounds (beagles, bassets,
> blood) terriers, springer spaniels, labradors.  Would these be considered 
> newer
> breeds or changed from medieval times?

Almost all new and even so, many have definitely been changed. (Insert
cranky rant about how the AKC and their ilk have damaged dog breeds here.)
If you're curious about a particular breed, I'd go to one of the breed
clubs and ask them. Many have material available online. Eg. You can
view the Poodle History Project page at: 
   http://www3.sympatico.ca/emily.cain/
(But do bear in mind that these people's passion is their dogs, and
not good research.)

>  I am also under the assumption (going on
> the food theme) that you would have specific types of dogs for specific
> types of hunting

Yes -- sight hounds vs. scent hounds vs. retrievers etc. Some breeds of
dogs were bred to chase something they could see ("sight hounds") vs.
others who were meant to smell out game ("scent hounds") vs. still others
who were meant to bring back game that had been brought down ("retrievers")
by either arrow or falcon/hawk.

The Unicorn Tapestries have good realistic images of many dogs. They look
like Black Labrador Retrievers to this untrained eye.

Elizabeth Braidwood
Who keeps two standard poodles.
donna at kwantlen.bc.ca
http://www.kwantlen.bc.ca/~donna

============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================