‘Is that a proper Jack Russell?’ is a question I am often asked of Vinnie, who is sometimes described as ‘small’, ‘long’ or ‘a wimp’. Vinnie evidently falls short of the ideal of the Jack Russell terrier in appearance and temperament. This is surprising given the variety of sizes and shapes such terriers assume and their historical relationship with UK breeding standards. The Jack Russell was registered as a breed with the Kennel Club as recently as 2016, and thereafter could be shown at Crufts, the premier UK dog show. Only in 2024 was the breed welcomed into the family of Kennel Club breeds with Championship status. A breed standard consists in the guidelines describing a breed's ideal characteristics, including its appearance and behaviour, assessed relative to its purported function. The lurcher is not a breed but a type. Like Vinnie, the function my lurcher Ruby should fit is hunting. An Internet search for ‘lurcher’, in addition to many rehoming sites, will reveal the world of breeding, as captured in blog and web forum posts by ‘extreme’ hunters describing how other breeds are mixed with sighthounds to increase ‘intelligence’ (collies, terriers) or for greater bite power and strength (bulldogs). To discover the origins of this preoccupation with form, function and appearance, look no further than The Invention of the Modern Dog.
This book provides an engaging account of the development or ‘invention’ of ‘breed’ in the Victorian period. Its focus is dogs, the most physically varied mammal on the planet. This is a richly researched account drawing on a variety of archival sources, and it provides a nuanced analysis. The subtitle is important. Whereas ‘breed’ focused on differentiation by the standardization of physical characteristics, ‘blood’ concerns the inheritance of characteristics (similar to the idea of genetics today). The first chapter, ‘Before breed’, charts the ways dogs were described as physically distinct types between 1800 and 1860. Function in dogs characterizes this process, the authors argue – thus sighthounds such as greyhounds were used for hunting with speed, terriers for killing rats, collies for herding. The idea of the dog as understood through the concept of breed, they suggest, is ‘co-produced socially and materially’ (p. 8). This book tells a history of this process.
Whether the origin of the story of the modern dog can be linked to a single individual is perhaps moot, but the authors suggest that the first modern dog was ‘Major’, who, in The Field magazine of 1865, was represented as the ideal type of pointer for his appearance and physical characteristics – his ‘form’ (pp. 83–4). From the 1860s, dogs were increasingly characterized by form rather than function, and they became more standardized. Uniformity was encouraged and facilitated through ‘conformation’ to a breed standard through the adoption of numerical scoring at dog shows for head, neck, legs, coat and so on (pp. 76–9). The dog show was the primary catalyst of breed. The modification and commodification of dogs and the increasing popularity of shows led to burgeoning commercial opportunities for breeders, sellers and industries developing around the keeping of dogs, such as pet food.
The authors’ argument is clear; it is also careful. Breed standards were subject to dispute. They shifted over time under the influence of the tension between the importance of inheritance compared to the appearance of breed conformation standards. Breeders themselves are depicted as a varied group, with some most committed to the ‘improvement’ of the breed (primarily on grounds of appearance) and some preoccupied with adherence to the breed standards. There were also different foci for commercial dog breeders and those who participated in shows primarily with either pets or working animals.
Discourses on race, class and gender feature throughout, from aristocratic concerns with ‘purity’ of bloodline and the dangers of mixed or impure blood to attempts to shut down, control and order working-class dog ‘beauty contests’ and working-class participation in sporting-dog shows at agricultural fairs. The tensions between breed and blood play out in racialized concern about ‘degeneracy’, that beauty sacrificed utility such that dogs lost their ‘original’ breed characters. Nationalism also makes its presence felt in critiques of the abandonment of British dogs for ‘foreign’ breeds. Evolutionary thinking and preoccupation with Darwinism and social Darwinism from the 1880s feature in Chapter 6 on the developing science of breeding, which will be of particular interest to readers of this journal.
The breadth of social issues covered makes the book relevant to readers of nineteenth-century social history as well as those interested in human–animal relations. This reader was less interested in the detail of ‘dog fancy’ associations and the struggle for the pre-eminence of Crufts, but the material on science and on the exclusion and involvement of women in showing and breeding was fascinating. There is evidence of cruelty and animal abuse, and humanitarian responses, but this constitutes a smaller element of the story than it might. A highlight (alongside the rich illustrations) was the space given to feminist anti-vivisectionist Francis Power Cobbe, whose 1895 letter to the Ladies Kennel Association declared ‘no interest in the various points of conventional beauty, which are the glory of Dog-shows’. Rather, Cobbe was ‘so deeply interested in the character of dogs and their intellectual possibilities that I rather resent the importance attached to … the precise angles of their noses’ (p. 212). This speaks to wider feminist concern with the lives of animals from the nineteenth century to the present. Plate 8 shows the PETA campaign against Crufts, decrying the breeding of ‘genetic freaks’ prone to illness and disease. The UK All-Party Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare and Dog Welfare has consistently raised concerns with ‘breed standards’ for pedigree dogs’ welfare. The Kennel Club provided library and archival support for the authors of this book, and its members and governing body would be advised to take their insights on board. The book's conclusion, ‘The past in the present’, is apposite: dealing with the present challenges of abuse by breeding requires an understanding of their past.
