Heyer question

[truepenny]

I'm rereading The Reluctant Widow and am wondering: does anyone have a good photo-reference for Bouncer? I know roughly what a Mastiff looks like, and by lurcher, I imagine Heyer most probably means a Greyhound-Collie cross, but I'm having a rather difficult time imagining how the three would go together. Aside from the part where Bouncer is clearly a Very Large Dog.

Since it seems unlikely that anyone out there actually has a Greyhound/Collie/Mastiff cross and has put pictures of same on the internet (although this is the internet and one never knows), speculation is also welcome!

Comments

[tournevis.livejournal.com]

Well this is supposed to illustrate a Mastiff/Greyhound mix.
http://www.molossermania.com/brd/b/b008/history.html

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[tournevis.livejournal.com]

Pleasure.

[shana.livejournal.com]

Well, it sounds easier than finding a picture of a Baluchistan Hound...

[karenmiller.livejournal.com]

A lurcher is a cross between a greyhound and an Irish wolfhound, which is what gives them the sparsely shaggy coat. They are, or were, used primarily for hare coursing.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Not in the UK. A lurcher is a first or second generation cross between a sight hound of any kind and a sheepdog. I am told the ideal mix is three-quarters sight-hound and one quarter sheepdog.

Irish Wolfhounds are sight hounds and can be (but are very rarely) used for breeding lurchers. They are lazy beasts and would not make a good poacher's dog, which is what the lurcher actually was bred for. The collie was added for brains, with which sighthounds are not heavily endowed.

[karenmiller.livejournal.com]

Well, the lurcher I lived with in Buckingham was a greyhound/Irish wolfhound cross, so I guess mileage varies.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Yes, it may well have been, though a Deerhound cross would have been more usual than a Wolfhound and a Greyhound or Whippet cross more usual than either - I've also see Lurchers who were Saluki crosses. A lurcher isn't a breed (even a non-pedigree breed like the Working Sheepdog) or even a standard cross like a Labradoodle - it is the name given to a type of dog that is an intermixture of sighthound and herding dog. A cross between two sighthounds (say a Greyhound and an Irish Wolfhound) is not a lurcher but a "longdog".

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Well, I only know what the internet tells me, but I've seen a couple of sources claim that the Wolfhound was the original cross for a lurcher. And wikipedia claims that a lurcher is any sighthound+non-sighthound cross, which seems to square with the usage I'm seeing at UK dog adoption sites, so I wonder if the usage may be a bit looser, depending.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Nowadays, when lurchers have become fashionable, any sighhound cross is sold as a lurcher. I seriously doubt that Heyer thought about lurchers in that way.

However, in my youth (and that is 50 years ago), lurchers were travellers' dogs, and associated with poachers poaching. They were bred for brains and trainability, hence the collie/sheepdog incross - and that is where the rough coat comes from. Another reason - Irish Wolfhounds were very rare dogs until recently, and they are still reasonably uncommon. This is not true of greyhounds, whippets or working sheepdogs, the animals usually used. I did a lot of reading about British country practices in those days, as well as watching Jack Hargreaves, who knew all there was to know about such things.

Incidentally, Robin McKinley, who has longdogs, gets very, very cross indeed if they are referred to as lurchers.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Try this
http://www.lurchers.org.uk/brief%20history%20part%20one.htm

this

http://members.tripod.com/M_F_A/lurcher.htm

and this

http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/lurcher.htm

[coffeeem.livejournal.com]

Still no registry of them outside of Baluchistan, as I understand it. So few have been smuggled out of the country, even by unconventional, care-for-nobody, attractive English noblemen.

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

Borzoi might be the closest you'll find to gh/collie pix.

Borzoi / mastiff cross? Dunno . . .

Wolfhound-ish, but less wiry?

[topknot.livejournal.com]

my best guess is that it would look similar to a sloughi (long, narrow muzzle, drop ears, etc.) but would have a heavier build, a wider barrel, and perhaps a medium to long-haired coat with feathering but not as much as a standard rough collie.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

here's my silken windhound, roses. her genetics theoretically contain whippets (smaller greyhounds, more or less) and collies:



hope this helps!

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

What a lovely dog! Thank you for sharing the picture.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

At a guess, a wolfhound-greyhound lurcher would look a fair bit like a Scottish Deerhound (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Deerhound). If you add mastiff to the mix, you'll get something with a broader chest and heavier bones and skull.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Please note that a Wolfhound/Greyhound cross would not be a "lurcher" but a "longdog".

[katallen.livejournal.com]

http://www.ourdogs.co.uk/News/2008/Mar2008/News280308/duke.htm

I'm not sure what kind of lurcher or whether mastiff is being used as short for bull mastiff (so there may be some extra bull terrier in there). If a little bull terrier is allowed to creep in you can also get something like the new Alaunts.

[I'd advise against reading the story - it has a happy ending but the beginning and middle is blood-boiling bureacracy with a heavy serving of police pig-headedness]

[girlpunksamurai.livejournal.com]

*shakes head*

I found a picture of a Napoleon Mastiff-those dogs are huge, btw-but didn't find an exact picture of what you're looking for.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

A google images search for "rspca lurcher" seems to bring up a reasonable selection. They're a bit of a mixed bag, as you can imagine from the general sighthound x sheepdog definition.

[inamac.livejournal.com]

I tend to picture Bouncer as a sort of hairy Great Dane (in Heyer's day mastiffs tended to be taller on the leg than are bred today, and the Great Dane, which is still classified as a mastiff-type, is probaby the nearest modern equivalent). By 'lurcher' she almost certainly meant a greyhound/collie cross - the term 'lurcher' indicates that the dogs had the intelligence to 'lurch' across the corners to catch running prey, rather than coursing (following the path of the hare) in which the objective was sport rather than actually catching the hare for the pot...

I can't immediately find the reference, but countrymen also had a specific name for the whippet/terrier cross used for both digging out and catching rabbits, though these days you'll also find this cross incorrectly called a 'lurcher'.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Okay. I can sort of, if I mentally squint, imagine a hairy Great Dane, and that does indeed seem about right.

Thank you!

(Also, I love your icon.)