Following the ancient trade routes that have criss-crossed the Pyrenees mountains for millennia no longer requires a dangerous trek through steep mountain gorges. Nowadays it’s a pleasant drive on a modern highway. But as we traveled across the stunning landscape dotted with the remains of ancient fortresses and timeworn shepherd trails, we could imagine what it must have been like in the 14th century when hunters in the area first began to hunt with pointing dogs.
Lisa and I had left cool, green, humid France in the morning and by mid-afternoon we were in hot, arid Spain. We were traveling through the very birthplace of the pointing dog on our way to photograph Spain’s native breeds. Stopping at a roadside gas station, I decided to reprogram our GPS unit to allow a short detour. I wanted to pass through the province in which Spanish hunters developed one of the breeds we were going to see. When the device asked me to spell the name of a major town in the area, I punched in the letters B-U-R-G-O-S.



It is tempting to conclude that the Burgos Pointer is the granddaddy of all pointing dogs. After all, it looks like an old breed, it comes from the very region where all pointing dogs originated, and
 it is even called “Old Spanish Pointer” in some publications. However, according to veterinary geneticist and breed expert José manuel Sanz Timón, the Burgos Pointer is a relatively modern descendant of the Old Spanish Pointer that is so often referred to in the old literature.

Sanz Timón points out that all too often, people simply assume that any historic mention of a Spanish Pointer automatically means it was from Burgos, or that any painting that includes the image of a hunting dog represents a Burgos Pointer. He suggests that it is “patriotic enthusiasm” that has caused breed supporters to claim that the Burgos is the original pointing dog.

According to Sanz Timón, the first time that words Perdiguero and Burgos were mentioned in the same sentence was sometime after 1808. He writes that an inventory drawn up by an official of the King’s Ger- man Legion includes a list of supplies and materials that were to be shipped out. On the list, it is said, is mention of dogs that “are called Perdigueros in Burgos”. He also cites another reference to the breed in the 1907 book, Geschichte der Königlich Deutschen Legion (History of the King’s German Legion), in which author Bernhard Schwertfeger writes about large brown and white dogs from the area of Burgos that were given as gifts. Based on these and other documents, Sanz Timón concludes that the region of Burgos has only recently been associated with a specific type of pointing dog. If the Burgos Pointer were the original Spanish Pointer, there would be much earlier references to it by name. Furthermore, the Burgos Pointer has a white and brown coat while many of the early English references to the Old Spanish Pointer indicate that it was often black, or even tri-colored.
In Spain there are remarkably few references to any kind of generic, widely distributed pointing dog. But there are mentions of local varieties that went by names such as Pachón de Navarra, Pachón de Vitoria, Perdiguero Navarro, Perdiguero Leonés, Perdiguero Gallego, Perdiguero Portugués, Ca Mè Mallorquí and Gorgas. In some cases, these local varieties differed in name only. In other cases, the dogs were clearly different in size, shape, coat or other important aspects. The largest contributing factor to these differences was the ratio of blood from the original types of dogs used to create them: the Sabuesos, a type of tracking dog, and Pachónes, the earliest type of pointing dogs.

No matter what the name or variety, all the local varieties of Old Spanish Pointers were already in decline when William Arkwright traveled to Spain in the 1890s to research the history of the English Pointer. Since he makes no mention of any type of dog from Burgos, it is assumed that the breed now known as the Pediguero de Burgos represents a comparatively recent branch of the Old Spanish Pointer that developed in the relative isolation of the Burgos region.

In modern times, we find references to the breed in 1912 when the first two Perdigueros were registered with the newly founded Real Sociedad Central de Fomento de las Razas Caninas en España, the Royal Spanish Canine Society. The pedigree record indicates that during this time breeders were practicing either extremely tight inbreeding or they were crossing to other breeds. As a result, there was very little uniformity in the breed. In fact, until the 1950s, there wasn’t even an official standard for the Burgos Pointer.

The civil war that engulfed Spain in the 1930s had dire consequences for all dog breeds in Spain. For the Burgos Pointer, there was the added difficulty that many of them were taken out of Spain by German soldiers stationed there as “volunteers” and advisors. Members of the so-called Condor Legion are said to have purchased many Burgos for shipment back to Germany and there are several eyewitness accounts of planes being loaded with large numbers of adult dogs and pups.

In a symposium on Spanish dog breeds held in 1982, José Manuel Sanz Timón presented an account from a Spanish military officer. Don Raúl García Bengoechea, who was assigned to the capital of the national zone at that time, personally saw how this emigration was carried out.

They bought adult females, pregnant (females) and puppies, as well as males. One can not say how many dogs the Germans took, but it is assumed that it was many and the best. The war was a hard blow to the breed.

By the end of the civil war, there were very few Burgos Pointers left in Spain. Those that remained were very heavily inbred and inbreeding depression be- came a serious issue. By the late 1960s only a dozen or so Burgos Pointers were registered each year with the Spanish Canine Society and articles with titles such as “Farewell Burgos Pointer” began to appear in the Spanish sporting magazines.

Then, in 1972, José Manuel Sanz Timón decided to take action to save the breed. His first step was to search the area of Castilla y León for any remaining Burgos Pointers that he could use in an intensive breeding program. He managed to find several good specimens that would eventually form the pillars of his breeding program. By the early 1980s Sanz Timón had developed seven separate bloodlines. In 1983 he and a number of fellow breed supporters formed the AEPPB (Asociación Española del Perro Perdiguero de Burgos). Their goal was to establish a long-term breeding and testing system designed to raise the level of field ability and conformation in the breed.

Inevitably, some breeders disagreed with the program and its strict requirements. Eventually a second club was formed, the CEAPPB (Club Español de Amigos del Perro Perdiguero De Burgos). More recently a third club was formed, the AECPB (Asociación Española de Cazadores con Perdiguero de Burgos). I have no idea what the divisions are between the various clubs but it does seem that there has been a certain amount of mud-slinging between them. So I can only suggest that anyone looking to find a good Burgos Pointer do a LOT of homework first and check into the breeding approaches being practiced by the various clubs.

Today the Burgos Pointer is well established in Spain and in recent years has enjoyed an increase in popularity. However, it is still more or less unknown outside of its native land, with only a few in Portugal and France. In a previous post I wrote about seeing a Burgos Pointer for the first time and posted a link here to a gallery of photographs of the dogs we saw on a more recent visit to Spain (all dogs featured courtesy of the Asociación Española del Perro Perdiguero de Burgos).




Read more about the breed, and all the other pointing breeds from Continental Europe, in my book Pointing Dogs, Volume One: The Continentals

The first glimpses we get of gundogs in Portugal are from old drawings and fairly vague references found in old manuscripts such as the Livro da Montaria written by Portuguese King João I in the 15th century. The dogs were probably very similar if not identical to others being developed in Spain and southern France at the time. They were most likely used to flush small game for the net or falcon, and if they did stand their game or “point”, they were surely trained to do so. Later on, they were selected for a more pronounced natural point and, like the dogs in Spain and elsewhere, eventually became true pointing dogs.

By the 18th century, they were common enough in Portugal to allow for a good number to be exported to England. Once there, they played a role in the development of the English Pointer. This is a point that almost every history of the Portuguese Pointer emphasizes, but one that is often overlooked in the histories of other breeds. This is probably due to the fact that many 18th and 19th century sources seem to refer to any dog from the Iberian Peninsula, or even southern France for that matter, as “Spanish Pointers”.

Fortunately, some sources do specifically mention Portuguese dogs. In a book written in 1776 titled A Treatise on Field Diversions by a Gentleman of Suffolk, author Barnabas Simonds writes that the English Pointer “...is acknowledged to be a native of Spain or Portugal; as many were and yet are brought to us from both kingdoms.”

English soldiers almost certainly discovered short-haired pointing dogs either while stationed in Spain or by frequent contact with Spanish soldiers in other areas of Europe. It is obvious that they also would have had ample opportunity to come into contact with dogs in Portugal since Lisbon is a major port through which many English troops would have traveled. So it is reasonable to conclude that Portuguese Pointers were taken to England and that they contributed to the development of the English Pointer. But to categorically state that they alone are that breed’s “grandfather” is a bit of a stretch. After all, Portuguese Pointers are from the same basic root stock that gave rise to all pointing breeds and were probably closely related to the pointing dogs in Spain and France.


In any case, what we do know is that the native pointing dogs of Portugal fell on hard times in the late 1800s and early 1900s when English Pointers, Setters and other breeds caught the imagination of large numbers of Portuguese hunters. Socio-economic factors and rampant crossbreeding also led to such a steep decline in the breed’s fortunes that by the 1920s it was in very rough shape. Fortunately in the 1930s efforts got underway to rehabilitate the breed. A breed standard was drawn up in 1931, but it wasn’t until 1939 that the modified standard was recognized. Looking back on the years of decline, the author of one of the first books on the breed, Father Do- mingos Barroso, wrote in an article published in the 1940s that:

In 1924 hunters from the city wanted to have the fury of the “Poin- terized” dogs and others like them. But the villages retained their old dogs. Time went by. The city folk realized that they had made a mistake and stepped back.

The “step back” was toward a more traditional version of the breed, one that had not been overly modified by excessive amounts of English Pointer blood. By 1948 Father Barroso would write that he had Portuguese Pointers of “excellent breeding”.

Throughout the 1960s and ’70s, progress toward the complete rehabilitation of the breed continued, and in 1984 the breed club l’Associação do Perdigueiro Português was established. Soon after, the reputation of the Portuguese Pointer began to move beyond the national boundaries. Breed clubs were formed in France (1999) and in the US (2004).

Today the breed continues to grow in popularity in Europe and North America. Its dynamic and well-organized club in Portugal has succeeded in keeping the breed mainly in the hands of hunters and in

promoting the breed first and foremost as a hunting dog.

The first thing you notice about a Portuguese Pointer is its resemblance to the English pointer and, in some ways, to the Boxer. But when we spent the day photographing Portuguese Pointers in their native  Portugal, what stood out more than anything else were their eyes. The dogs that day had the most expressive eyes we had ever seen.

Whenever Lisa and I meet with breeders of gundogs, I warn them to count their dogs before we leave since Lisa always carries a purse
 big enough to smuggle a puppy or two out of the kennel. Everyone knows I am joking, but when we were in Portugal, I was not so sure. I had the sneaking suspicion that if she’d been left alone for a few minutes, she just might have turned into a puppy-napper! And to be perfectly honest, I don’t think I would have turned her in if she had. We both really took a shine to the breed.

Of course, the views we formed were nowhere near objective. We saw some of the best dogs in the breed running across the gentle hills of a beautiful cork tree plantation in central Portugal. We were in the company of three of the most experienced members of the breed club and we’d just been served one of the most delicious picnic lunches we’d ever had. The dogs were super-affectionate and were calm in their kennels, but all business in the field. They pointed hard, backed each other and retrieved every bird to-hand.

And those eyes! They were so striking 
they gave some of the dogs a near-human expression. It must be the way that the dark pigment around the eyes, nose and lips contrasts with the yellow/brown coat. Lisa said that some of them looked as if they had a “Cleopatra eyeliner” sort of thing going on.

Back at our hotel, we reviewed the photos we’d taken at the cork plantation. They were some of our best work yet and only added to the positive impression that the breed had made on us. We talked about how great the day had been. We’d seen some very nice dogs, enjoyed charming company and beautiful weather. There was only one disappointment. Somehow, Lisa had resisted temptation: there were no puppies in her purse!

Click here to see a gallery of photos of Portuguese Pointers doing their thing in Portugal.





Read more about the breed, and all the other pointing breeds from Continental Europe, in my book Pointing Dogs, Volume One: The Continentals

Published in 1938, The Dog in Sport is a wonderful collection of charming tales describing days spent afield with gundogs. In it, author J. Wentworth Day wrote: 

When I first read those lines I almost said aloud, “what the heck is a double-nosed Spanish Pointer”? Did it have a nose that did double duty, air scenting and tracking? Or did “double nose” describe a physical feature? Searching the literature, I eventually found out. Freeman Lloyd, a noted American journalist, wrote in an issue of the AKC’s Gazette magazine published in the 1930s that some dogs had noses like the double barrels of a shotgun.

A nose like the double barrels of a shotgun? Was that even possible? I checked a few veterinary textbooks and soon learned that dogs – and people – can be born with what doctors call a bifid nose. The condition ranges from a slightly deeper than normal crease between the nostrils to a completely cleft nasal structure resulting in the double barreled shotgun look described by Lloyd. And it turns out that Spanish Pointers are not the only gundogs that can have such a nose. Even William Arkwright mentions double-nosed gundogs from Portugal and France and wrote that he knew of a family of double-nosed Irish Red Setters.

Once I had figured out just what a double nose was and understood that dogs from various regions could have them, I was determined to find out if there were any double nosed Spanish Pointers left in the world. Re-reading The Dog in Sport did not give me much hope.

I think those Spanish Pointers knew that their day was done, that they were the last of their race -- gone with the hand-sickle and the centuries of the long September stubbles, where partridges had sit like quails.

I had somehow stumbled onto the website for the Spanish magazine Perros de Caza, and found myself looking at the image of a dog with an orange and white coat, amber eyes and a nose like the double barrels of a shotgun! I was stunned. This wasn’t some dusty old painting, it was a recent photograph. The dog was a modern dog. The double-nosed Spanish Pointer was still alive!

Five years later, Lisa and I drove down a narrow road to a Spanish hamlet nestled into the side of hill near Pamplona. We were on the final leg of a journey that began with e-mails and phone calls and would end with a fascinating photo shoot in the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains were the Spanish Double-Nosed Pointer, known locally as the Pachon Navarro is still bred.

The Pachon Navarro traces back to the very first pointing dogs that developed on both sides of the Pyrenees Mountains in the 13th century. But until fairly recent times there were remarkably few written references to it. Nevertheless, it is generally accepted that the breed began as a blend of the two most common kinds of dogs used for hunting in Spain during the middle ages —tracking dogs and indigenous mastiff breeds.

About the middle of the 15th century, images of pointing dogs began to appear in Spain. Among the best-known are a miniature falconry scene in the cathedral of Toledo and a much later painting of Prince of Asturias Baltasar Carlos by Velázquez that features a dog that looks remarkably like the modern Pachon Navarro. 

Over the centuries, Spanish hunters refined the various types of local pointing dogs and named them for the area in which they were most common. By the 1800s, dogs of the Pachon type were found throughout northwestern Spain and went by a variety of names: Pachón, Perdiguero Navarro, Pachón de Vitoria, Pachón Español, Perdiguero Común or just Navarro. But when dogs shows began to be organized in Spain in the 1890s, they were all grouped under one name: Pachon Navarro.

By 1911, the Pachon Navarro gained the official recognition of the Real Sociedad Canina de España (Royal Canine Society of Spain). Thanks to influential breeders such as D. Gregorio Martínez López and several others, the Pachon Navarro made progress in terms of conformation and performance and continued to be bred by and for hunters until the 1950s. But when myxomatosis, a virus affecting rabbits, all but eliminated one of the main quarries of the Pachon Navarro, hunters abandoned the breed and turned to the specialist bird dogs, especially Pointers and Setters. By the early 1970s, the Pachon population was so low that most people believed it had gone extinct.

Then, in 1978, concerned with the dire straits facing many indigenous dog breeds in Spain at the time, the Central Canine Society of Madrid created a special Commission for Spanish Breeds and appointed José Manuel Sanz Timón as overall director. In 1979 the Commission asked three young veterinary students, Luis M. Arribas, Luis A. Centenera and Carlos Contera to locate and catalog any remaining Pachones they could find in the Narvarra, Rioja and Alava regions as well as parts of Portugal. The project was intended to be a relatively short-term effort designed to produce a written report and census of the breed. But it ended up being much more than just a research project and anything but short term. Today it is seen as the turning point in the history of the Pachon Navarro since it sparked a renewed interest among Spanish hunters for their native breeds of gundog.

When I finally got the opportunity to meet Dr. Carlos Contera near Guadalajara, Spain, I asked him why he became interested in the breed. 

Today the breed continues to gain ground among Spanish hunters. The number of Pachon Navarro pups whelped each year continues to climb. With a dynamic club working to gain full recognition for the breed, the future of the Pachon Navarro seems bright.

The Pachon Navarro could never be accused of looking like just another gundog. While it shares many of the features common to most Continental breeds, there are some significant differences. The most obvious, of course, is the nose. All dogs have a slight crease between their nostrils but it is usually no more than a very shallow line. But many Pachones have nostrils that are clearly divided by a much deeper furrow making it look similar to the business end of a side-by-side shotgun. This is the famous “double nose” referred to in the old literature.

Anatomically, it is actually a cleavage in the structure of the nose itself. It is not unique to the Pachon Navarro. In fact a good number of breed standards mention a split or double nose but when they do, it is always listed as a serious or disqualifying fault. The Pachon Navarro standard is the only one that allows it.

It is interesting to speculate just how the double nose came to be viewed as a positive characteristic for the Pachon Navarro. It is certainly possible that an individual with a split nose just happened to be an excellent hunter with a very fine sense of smell. Was this then seen as “proof” that at double nose was better than a regular nose?

Nowadays of course, breeders understand that the double nose offers no advantage over a normal nose and that it is simply a cosmetic feature of the breed. Furthermore, not all Pachones have a double nose. Nor do all breeders select for it. Pachon breeders understand that by using double-nosed dogs in their lines, they run the risk of producing pups with completely cleft palates. I was told that up to 10% of pups are either stillborn or are put down immediately after birth since the cleft is so profound that they are incapable of breathing or nursing properly. But most Pachones have a moderate cleft and are fine. They can breathe and suckle, run and hunt just like any other dog. 

The most common coat type in the breed is a short, smooth coat similar to that of other short-haired Continental breeds. A longhaired or Seduño coat similar in length and texture to that of some of the Brittany is also accepted. A wide variety of colors are allowed. Carlos Contera told me that The Pachon is a hunting dog and there are no bad colors for hunting dogs. The most common combinations are white and orange, white and brown, white and black and white and liver (a darker shade of brown) with or without patches or ticking. There are also self-colored (monochrome) and tri-color coats.

The Pachon Navarro is a fascinating breed of gundog. It is the closest thing we have to a direct link back to the ancestral dogs that were first developed on either side of the Pyrenees Mountains. Studying it allowed me to better understand what the pointing dogs of the 14th century must have been like.  

Our first encounter with the Pachon Navarro was in 2001 near Pamplona. Lisa and I had traveled from France to visit Pachon breeder Juan J. García Estévez the vice president of the Circulo de Cazadores y Criadores de Pachón Navarro. When we arrived, we were greeted warmly by Juan and his lovely wife, Carla, and by the most extraordinary-looking dogs we had ever seen. A solidly built bitch and two six-month old pups greeted us as we stepped into the yard. All of them had noses that fit Freeman Lloyd’s description to a tee—they were like the double barrels of a shotgun!

We spent two days with Juan and Carla and learned a lot about their dogs and the program to revive the breed. On an absolutely beautiful afternoon and evening walking in the hills near their home we watched their dogs work in the extraordinary light of the foothills of Los Pirineos, the Pyrenees Mountains, the breed’s birthplace.

I found the dogs to be exactly as advertised. They were tireless workers that kept a steady pace searching for game more or less within gun range. They mainly trotted but broke into a loping gallop for minute or two if the conditions warranted it and dug into even the thickest cover.

Four years later, on another trip to Spain, we had the distinct pleasure of meeting the leader of the recuperation effort, Carlos Contera and his father, Manuel, at their home near Guadalajara. Juan was there too. He kindly drove the three hours from his home to meet us once again. This time we saw a larger number of dogs, some with the double nose, some without. We also had the opportunity to see the longhaired version of the breed. 

In the field, we followed along as Carlos and Manuel hunted quail with their dogs. My initial impressions of the breed were confirmed. All the Pachones showed a good degree of desire, hunting hard despite the thick, thorny cover. Points were fairly intense but often lasted only until the gunner was within about 5 meters at which point the dog would bust into the thick, thorny cover to flush the bird. 

Watching the Pachones Navarro work, I got a real sense of what it must have been like to hunt with pointing dogs in the 14th century. The terrain and game they pursued was exactly as described in many classic works on pointing dogs. In fact, I am sure Carlos and Manuel could have used a nets or crossbows instead of modern firearms. The dogs certainly worked close enough and were able to sniff out the tiny European quail even in the tightest cover on that hot, dry day.