Why are they called Porcelaines? If the opinions differ on this subject, the most probable hypothesis is that, just before the Revolution, the huntsmen considered these dogs as so fragile that they gave them this nickname.
The first mention of these dogs, of which we can be sure, in the literature, is due to the Marquis de Foudras, the father of the well-known hunting author. In 1779, Foudras was one of the officers of the Gendarmerie of Lunéville, and, with some of his colleagues, he decided to form a series of crews to hunt the various game that could be found in the region: wolf, deer, deer, wild boar, hare, etc. Thus M. de Foudras brought his pack, which was in the boar's way, and M. de Choiseul was charged with the hare. For this, the latter brought from Switzerland sixty white and orange dogs (according to the words of Foudras, narrated by his son in Les Gentilshommes chasseurs). These subjects undoubtedly constitute the origin of the breed which has been called Dog of Lunéville, Dog of Franche-Comté, then Porcelain.
The crew association was soon inaugurated. Everything began with a sumptuous lunch offered by the Marshal of Castries who commanded the gendarmerie (at the time, the officers of this weapon were recruited from the noblest gentlemen of the kingdom). At the end of the meal, there was just time to force a hare. It was therefore decided to decouple Porcelaines de Choiseul. Foudras, however, was skeptical about the abilities of these dogs: "Each of us found these lovely little beasts, but the men of the trade had some doubts about their serious merits, and we wondered with concern how these velvet ears might face the brambles of the undergrowth, and how these legs, transparent by dint of being fine, would get out of business in the mud where they would enter like daggers, and in the stones where they would break like glass."
Nevertheless, the dogs were put in the way in a wood so thick that the bitters could not even penetrate it, which did not prevent the fragile Porcelaines to return without the slightest trouble, to raise a hare, and to take it in an hour and a half of hunting practically flawless. It seems that the affair made noise until Versailles, and that Louis XVI asked for a couple to raise his own packs.
What was the origin of the dogs that M. de Choiseul brought from Switzerland? Dr. Guillet brings it back to the crossroads between the famous white dog of Saint-Hubert named Souillard and a Braque of Italy named Baude which belonged to Anne de Beaujeu, Duchess of Bourbon. Their descendants were called "clerks", for having been the property of a secretary of Louis XII; the first had an immaculate livery, with just a yellow stain on his shoulder. They became the White Dogs of the King.
But how many races are attributed to Souillard, Baude, and the clerks? Two and a half centuries elapsed between the disappearance of Louis XII and the hunts of the gendarmerie of Lunéville. The large White Dogs of the Roy were probably used for many crosses, but, as far as the dogs acquired by M. de Choiseul are concerned, their paternity is only hypothetical.
The continuation of the history of the dogs which were then called Dogs of Franche-Comté or Dogs of Lunéville is clearer. The gendarmerie corps of Marshal Castries was dissolved in 1784. We then found Porcelain Cluny abbey, and then that of Luxeuil, and this is undoubtedly what allowed the race to cross the dark period of the revolution. In fact, the last abbot of Luxeuil, Mgr de Clermont-Tonnerre, gave a lot of dogs to a good doctor, Dr. Coillot, in gratitude for the care he had lavished on him. The doctor was lucky to be able to keep his dogs in the worst moments of the Terror. Other breeders, such as MM. Micaut and Monnot, of Besançon, or Martial, of Rang, had also recovered strains coming from the abbey of Cluny.
Subsequently, the descendants of Dr. Coillot succeeded in maintaining the breed with great constancy, after the dogs had made a stay with a certain Mr. Rosne. Thus the grandson of the doctor, M. Daubigné, recovered Termino and the Cleo lice and that, from this couple, he mounted a pack that was famous between 1865 and 1896.
Since then, Porcelaines have had some problems because of consanguinity. Dogs from the abbeys of Luxeuil and Cluny were therefore brought Harrier blood and blood Billy (the latter race probably having some common ancestry with the Dogs of Lunéville). Anyway, in the directory of hunting of 1975, this eminent cynophile that was the doctor Guillet specified, in the chapter "Porcelain": "About them as in any other case, do not forget that the pure race does not exist and can only serve the utopians who defend it. A race that does not evolve is a race that is dying."
Porcelaines were created primarily to hunt hares. But some crews also put them in the way of deer, or even wild boar. Indeed, despite their apparent delicacy, these dogs do not hesitate to face a "pig" holding the farm. Couteulx de Canteleu, another famous author in the field of common dogs, describes them perfectly: "These dogs are quite easy to lead, and they are quite successful. Enough to hunt, but without being too ambitious or too carried away, they do not lack foot, and as they have an exquisite nose for which there is hardly any bad weather, and that besides they do not like the the fox's way, these charming dogs, true specimens of hare dogs, deserve to be specially selected as the dog of Artois to form packs. They also love the deer way. The Porcelaines appear quite close to the Pointers Blanc and Orange and the dogs of Saint-Germain.
Finesse of nose and tenacity are therefore the main qualities of this breed which knows a certain renewal in many French crews. The cross with Harriers Somerset, made by hunters from the west of France, seems to have given him more train, since it is he who helped to build with Porcelain crews of deer, or deer. But when one considers the case of the La Luque rally, which, around 1975, decoupled in the path of the hare a pack composed at the same time of Porcelains, White French and Orange and Billys, one understands that the judges have some difficulty , in the competitions, when they have to determine the dog (or the batch of dogs) which will be classified pure Porcelain!
This situation is not new. As early as 1923, in fact, Dr. Castets wrote in his treatise on the descendants of the White Dogs of the King: "There are a certain number of crews of Porcelaines hunting the hare successfully. But the truth compels us to say that these packs are not absolutely purebred. They are, let us pass the expression, Porcelaines improved, Porcelaines which have in their ancestors a crossing (with the Poitevin or the English for example)."
Castets also cites the case of a friend who, having wanted to keep absolutely pure Porcelaines, regularly missed his animals, his dogs not having sufficient background to hunt in difficult terrain. The Lunéville Dogs that Foudras described seem far away! It is probable that the excess of consanguinity between the dogs having passed through the abbeys of Cluny and Luxeuil has weakened the race.
However, Porcelaines had grown well beyond the borders of Franche-Comté. The Viscount de Lorgeril, for example, had introduced them to hunt hare in Brittany, and, more recently, a very fine lot of these dogs was noticed in the crew Bouquin Berrichon, Count B. de Voguë.
Finally, we must mention Albert Favre who, in the fifties, makes the difference between the Franche-Comté Porcelain and the smaller Swiss Porcelain. Favre relies on this distinction to cast doubt on Foudras' thesis, but without using a truly convincing argument. He said, however, that the skeletons of Swiss dogs were too light, and that their hair was so thin that it appeared transparent when it was wet. This may explain why many huntsmen have seen fit to strengthen the breed by various crosses. |
Aggressive or overly shy.
English (United Kingdom)