CREATING A NEW DOG BREED Most of today’s dog breeds are the
result of nat-ural selection or man-made selection. Human
inter-vention in dog breeding is not new; by the MiddleAges,
specific dogs were bred for a specific type ofwork like guarding,
herding or hunting. The desireof men to create their own breed
dates from more re-cent times. The first breed standards were
written inthe second half of the 19th century and at the sametime
there seems to have been a need for some peopleto create their own
breeds based on several types orby mixing two or three already
existing breeds. In al-
most every case, the new breed had to gratify the per-sonal
wishes of its creator. Sometimes the influenceof the creator was so
important that the name of thecreator was fixed on the breed
forever. That’s the casewith the Schillerstövare or Schiller
Hound.
GUN DOG – STÖVARE – HOUND To create a new breed you need the
base mate-rial. The Swedish farmer/hunter/painter Per Schillerused
several types of hounds that were present inSweden at that time.
Maybe farmer is not entirelyright, because the Swedish Kennel Club
writes ‘god-sågare’, a large landowner. Per Schiller (1858-1892)was
born in Stenungsund, part of the Bohuslän areain the south of the
country. Being a real outdoorsmanand a passionate hunter, he needed
a useful workingdog, versatile and a specialist for hunting fox
andsnow hare. It is assumed that most of the hounds in Swedenin the
middle of the 19th century originated fromAustria. Probably
soldiers took them back to Sweden,
when they returned home after fighting on Europeanbattlefields.
Other countries that contributed to thedevelopment of Per
Schiller’s breed were Germany- especially the southern part -
Switzerland and theUnited Kingdom According to the Swedish
dictionary, the trans-lation of the word Stövare is ‘gun dog’, but
taking acloser look at the many Scandinavian Stövares, it isobvious
that these type of dogs belong to the scenthound family that
consists of more than 80 membersin different European
countries.
ENGLISH HARRIERS AND VARIOUS HOUNDS Although it’s been only 100
years ago sinceSchiller created his breed, it’s not easy to find
outwhich bloodlines he used for his first litters. Most au-thors
assume that the bloodlines were 7/16 Swedish-German, 7/16 English
(Harriers) and 2/16 Swiss. Itis remarkable that Austria is not
mentioned as one ofthe countries of origin. In the same period, Mr.
O.B. Rydholm importedan English Harrier called ‘Crossy’. This dog
mated aHarrier bitch imported by an English civil engineerwho also
lived in Sweden. Schiller used their off-spring to create his
Stövare. The hounds that origi-nated from southern Germany were
mostly brownand black with white markings and rather small, butin
1870 Mr. H. Carbonnier imported hounds fromSwitzerland that were a
completely different typefrom the German hounds. All these various
types of hounds from Germanyand Switzerland, and English Harriers,
form the basisof the Schillerstövare and it’s obvious that
Schiller
H I S T O R Y
Most dogs were developed after hundreds of years of evolution
and lengthy selection by breeders. However, some breeds owe
their existence to just one person. 190 - September, 2011
S C H I L L E R S T Ö V A R EPER SCHILLER and his
MASTERMIND
text and illustrations by RIA HÖRTER
started his breedingwith rather differentdogs of
differentheights. It wasn’t theeasiest way to create asound type,
but asound and uniformtype was Schiller’sfirst aim. He neverwanted
to create acompletely new typeof dog, but only a use-ful variety of
Stövare.His ambition was tocreate an aristocratic
dog with a lively temperament, strongfeet and excellent nose - a
versatile dogthat could easily work in heavy ground. The founder of
the Swedish KennelClub, Dr. Adolf Patrick Hamilton, hadthe same
aspiration and therefore he andPer Schiller cooperated.
Hamilton’sname is connected with the Hamilton-Stövare, also
developed thanks to anEnglish breed, the Foxhound. The
maindifference between the Schillerstövareand the Hamiltonstövare
is the color: theSchiller is black and tan with saddle andthe
Hamilton is tri-color with saddle.
UNIQUE ACHIEVEMENT In 1886, Sweden’s first national dog show was
held inStockholm. Per Schiller entered two of his homebred
dogs,‘Tamburini 1’ and ‘Ralla 1’. They are considered to be the
an-cestors of the present Schillerstövares. Their
grandchildren,‘Polka 1’ and ‘Vals 1’, were entered at the 1891 show
in Göte-borg. They were portrayed in a painting by Schiller. In the
first generations inbreeding was a must and thanksto inbreeding and
strong line breeding Schiller was able to breeda uniform type in a
relatively short time. Not only that, the Stö-vares bred by
Schiller were very good working dogs. It was aunique achievement,
but was it luck, knowledge or simply thatthe genetic differences
among the various dogs he used were notthat great? The famous Swiss
dog writer Dr. Hans Räber writes, “Prob-ably Schiller used German
hounds and black-and-red houndsfrom Switzerland, for example the
old ‘Aargauer Hound’.” Per Schiller died in 1894. He was only 34
years old. Hisbrother Karl inherited a balanced breed, not only in
temperamentbut in appearance. In honor of its creator, the breed
was namedSchillerstövare in 1907, 15 years after Schiller’s
death.
IMPRESSIVE SHOW In 1903, the Stövare Club of Västergötland
organized a dogshow. About 50 dogs from the ‘Schiller line’ were
present and
therefore it became possible totalk about an official breed
stan-dard. People at the show wereamazed and impressed by thefact
that the dogs from the‘Schiller line’ were of a very uni-form type.
Unfortunately, PerSchiller did not experience thesuccess of his
dogs’ officialrecognition. In the beginning, the breedwas entered
in a provisional stud-book, but the Schillerstövare hasbeen a fully
recognized Swedish breed since 1913. At the 1910 Stockholm show, a
Schillerstövare called ‘Ray’
was entered. The dog was bred by KarlSchiller, owned by J.
Svedenborg and hadextremely good working qualities. The dogwas used
intensively by hunters and Ray’sname appears in a lot of
Schillerstövarepedigrees.
RARE BREEDThe Schillerstövare is still a rare
breed - not in Sweden, but certainly in therest of Europe. In
general, Swedish breedersdo not want to sell their dogs abroad and
ifthey do, they want to be sure the puppy willbe used for
hunting.
The Schiller loves to drive foxes andis an excellent dog for
hare hunting. He
works alone with his master not in a pack like the other
Stövares.Overall his temperament is good which makes him suitable
as acompanion dog as well. He needs a firm hand and a lot of
exer-cise. Training is a must, as for any strong-willed hound. It
is not too difficult to recognize the Schiller in a group
ofStövares. The coat is always rich brown with a solid black
sad-dle. Being a relatively young breed, they are very uniform.
Thepresent breed standard dates from 1997. The Swedish breed club
can be found at
http://www.sto-vare.se/rasklubbar/schiller/start.asp (in
Swedish).
H I S T O R Y
continued from page 190
192 - September, 2011
A ‘modern’ Hamilton-Stövare bitch, exhibited at a Dutch dog show
in 2005.
(Photo by Ria Hörter.)
The hunter and his dog with their catch.
(Photo by Per Klaesson in Stövare och Stövarejakt.)
A self-portrait of Per Schiller (1858-1892),the creator of the
Schillerstövare
(watercolor)
People at the 1903 show in Västergötland were amazed and
impressed. Pictured are ‘Hej’, ‘Kej’ and ‘Nippa’.
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