Shooting Times & Country

Meet the Euro stars

Black labradors have one great advantage as gundogs: they’re wonderfully anonymous. Everyone has got one, so if yours is particularly badly behaved, no one really notices. You can even pretend that it’s not yours.

That’s not the case if you work, for example, an épagneul de Pont-Audemer or a braque d’Auvergne. It’s likely to be the only one on the shoot and probably the only one in the county, if not the country.

It may be fun owning a rare breed, but it will always be the centre of attention, with everyone waiting for it to course a hare or eat a pheasant. It behoves you to train it well to make sure that neither you nor your dog are ever laughed at.

It’s quite a challenge finding out how many breeds of gundog there are in Europe and

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