Nederlandse Kooikerhondje Club of Southern California
ORIGINS
Centuries ago, humans collected edible plants and caught animals for daily consumption. Birds were an important food source. Many kinds of birds fly in during the seasonal migration and this must have looked like an inexhaustible source. Particularly ducks were important as they came in high numbers, were relatively easy to catch and have ample meat. Many systems and methods were devised to capture ducks in great quantities. With the invention of black powder, a special gun for the purposes to kill many birds in one shot became popular. These were big, expensive and heavy, often mounted on shallow bottom boats to get close to a flock of ducks. In England these were called “puntgunners” and a “Puntgunner” club is still in existence today.
Catching ducks (and other water birds) with a gun has its drawbacks; it kills indiscriminately - even the tame birds one might want to keep around to attract new, wild birds. But also, a shot bird is a dead bird, and in an era without refrigeration immediate consumption is necessary. Catching birds alive with the possibility to keep them in a cage is therefore an attractive alternative. But catching ducks alive in great quantities is not easy.
There were many variations of the eenden-kooi (duck-cage) in the middle ages - from small cage operations to more elaborate designs with a sizable pond and nettings and cages.
In 1622 the Friese poet, Victor Ryckelsma wrote a didactic poem “Wilde Eenden-iacht”, explaining the workings of the Eendenkooi. These didactic poems, meant to provide instruction, were often full of glorious references to romantic notions of past history thereby obscuring a more technical explanation of what was written about. However, Ryckelsma’s work does give us some detail on the use of tame ducks, decoys, specially trained dogs and a decoy-man operating behind a screen or mat. Already then, the dog and man worked together to lure unsuspecting ducks into a trap, attracted by the dog’s wagging tail, movements and “hide and show” game.
These dogs are described as “spaniels” (page 17, 4th sentence from bottom), Spaniels being a generic term for a range of dogs at the time. The dogs are further described as loyal, alert and willing to work, mid-sized and blond of color. The dogs should not stand still but have a “floaty gait” to attract the ducks. The decoy man as described would work with two (possibly more) dogs at the time where they operated as a team with one visible at the time.
As described by Ryckelsma, the dogs would operate on the side of the water only, never in the water. This changed in the following centuries - dogs could work right in the muddy side walks but also in the water. Those in the water are described as softly pushing the ducks towards the catch pipe where the dog on land would take over with its hide and show routine.
Eendenkooien were very successful and profitable. Some recorded a duck count of many thousands caught in one season. The invention developed across the Netherlands and Flanders and eventually made its way also to Germany and England. At the start of the nineteen century the Netherlands had several thousand working eendenkooien, a century and a half later most were gone. Culinair interests changed, land use regulations, dewatering and larger city plans coupled with high maintenance costs made that the eendenkooien were no longer financially feasible. As the eendenkooi vanished, so did the little dog that was instrumental to its success.
From the 17th century paintings we learn that a “blond spaniel” was also seen in many households. A family dog certainly, but perhaps also used to catch vermin? We cannot know for certain that the dogs in the paintings and eendenkooi are one and the same - a defined breed is unlikely to have existed at the time. On the other hand, we may assume some degree of kinship between the dogs on the paintings and in the eendenkooi, as two entirely different breeds (however ill-defined) living separately in a country with a small population would not have been practical.
And so these dogs were forgotten until 1939 when a noble lady with just the right skills became interested in saving them from extinction…
