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

[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".