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BREED HISTORY
The Cavalier King Charles Spaniel of today is descended from the
small Toy Spaniels seen in so many of the sixteenth, seventeenth,
and eighteenth century paintings by Titian, Van Dyck, Lely, Stubbs,
Gainsborough, Reynolds, and Romney. These paintings show small
spaniels with flat heads, high set ears, almond eyes, and rather
pointed noses. During Tudor times, Toy Spaniels were quite common as
ladies' pets, but it was under the Stuarts that they were given the
royal title of King Charles Spaniels.
History tells us that King Charles II was seldom seen without two or
three spaniels at his heels. So fond was King Charles II of his
little dogs, he wrote a decree that the King Charles Spaniel should
be accepted in any public place, even in the Houses of Parliament
where animals were not usually allowed. This decree is still in
existence today in England. As time went by, and with the coming of
the Dutch Court, Toy Spaniels went out of fashion and were replaced
in popularity by the Pug. One exception was the strain of red and
white Toy Spaniels that was bred at Blenheim Palace by various Dukes
of Marlborough.
In the early days, there were no dog shows and no recognized breed
standard, so both type and size varied. With little transport
available, one can readily believe that breeding was carried out in
a most haphazard way. By the mid-nineteenth century, England took up
dog breeding and dog showing seriously. Many breeds were developed
and others altered. This brought a new fashion to the Toy Spaniel -
dogs with the completely flat face, undershot jaw, domed skull with
long, low set ears and large, round frontal eyes of the modern King
Charles Spaniel (also called "Charlies" and known in the
United States today as the English Toy Spaniel). As a result of this
new fashion, the King Charles Spaniel of the type seen in the early
paintings became almost extinct.
It was at this stage that an American, Roswell Eldridge, began to
search in England for foundation stock for Toy Spaniels that
resembled those in the old paintings, including Sir Edwin
Landseer’s "The Cavalier's Pets." All he could find were
the short-faced Charlies. Eldridge persisted, persuading the Kennel
Club in 1926 to allow him to offer prizes for five years at Crufts
Dog Show - twenty-five pounds sterling for the best dog and
twenty-five pounds sterling for the best bitch -- for the dogs of
the Blenheim variety as seen in King Charles II's reign. The
following is a quotation taken from Crufts’catalog: "As shown
in the pictures of King Charles II's time, long face no stop, flat
skull, not inclined to be domed and with the spot in the center of
the skull" and the prizes to go to the nearest to the type
described.
No one among the King Charles breeders took this challenge very
seriously as they had worked hard for years to do away with the long
nose. Gradually, as the big prizes came to an end, only people
really interested in reviving the dogs as they once had been were
left to carry on the breeding experiment. At the end of five years
little had been achieved, and the Kennel Club was of the opinion
that the dogs were not in sufficient numbers, nor of a single type,
to merit a breed registration separate from the Charlies.
In 1928 a dog owned by Miss Mostyn Walker, Ann's Son, was awarded
the prize. (Unfortunately Roswell Eldridge died in 1928 at age 70,
only a month before Crufts, so he never saw the results of his
challenge prizes.) It was in the same year that a breed club was
founded, and the name Cavalier King Charles Spaniel was chosen. It
was very important that the association with the name King Charles
Spaniel be kept as most breeders bred back to the original type by
way of the long-faced throwouts from the kennels of the short-faced
variety breeders. Some of the stock threw back to the long-faced
variety very quickly. Pioneers were often accused of using
outcrosses to other suitable breeds to get the long faces, but this
was not true, and crossing to other breeds was not recommended by
the club.
At the first meeting of the club, held the second day of Crufts in
1928, the standard of the breed was drawn up; it was practically the
same as it is today. Ann's Son was placed on the table as the live
example, and club members brought all the reproductions of pictures
of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries they could
muster. As this was a new and tremendous opportunity to achieve a
really worthwhile breed, it was agreed that as far as possible, the
Cavalier should be guarded from fashion, and there was to be no
trimming. A perfectly natural dog was desired and was not to be
spoiled to suit individual tastes, or as the saying goes,
"carved into shape." Kennel Club recognition was still
withheld, and progress was slow, but gradually people became aware
that the movement toward the "old type" King Charles
Spaniel had come to stay. In 1945 the Kennel Club granted separate
registration and awarded Challenge Certificates to allow the
Cavalier King Charles Spaniel to gain their championships.
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