to their rights and welfare. Whether these dogs really are only objects or are at least treated as such by their owners will be discussed in Chapter 3.
Introduction: Defining Sport Dogs
Within this chapter ‘sport dogs’ are defined as canines that are required to take part in a sporting activity at the behest of their human owners. These sport dogs are distinguished from the working dogs and leisured dogs who form the foci of Chapters 2 and 4 though the shifting boundaries between them are recognized. Sport dogs are animals used by humans in the leisure environment in a formal sporting event for recreational purposes and/or in search of a victory in an event. This chapter will look at the extent and nature of a variety of sporting activities where dogs play a prominent/dominant role and will look at changes in these sports across space and time. This analysis will be situated within discussions of changing social norms and values relating to the rights of animals in general and dogs in particular, including the use of representations of sport dogs as a means of constructing personal identity.
The range of sports in which dogs have taken and/or still take part is truly impressive and ranges from widely known sports to those that are best described as ‘fringe’ activities known by relatively few people beyond their active participants. In this way the range of dog sports is arguably very similar to that of sports in general. A list of sports in which dogs take part is provided in Table 3.1; while it may be desirable to say this is an exhaustive list such a claim is avoided due to the knowledge that new sports appear to be emerging frequently and that finding ‘every’ niche sport is difficult if not impossible. My publisher made a logical plea for ordering the material in Table 3.1, potentially differentiating between those sports that are still actively engaged in and those that have faded into history. The problem is that while the prominence of some of these sports may have changed and the nature of others has morphed over time it is very difficult to say with any certainty that any of the sports in Table 3.1 are confined to history. Consequently, beyond grouping the sports and providing brief details of those that are more obscure, I have resisted the temptation to structure the material in the table. Rather, examples of the difficulty associated with doing so are highlighted throughout this chapter.
Table 3.1. Dog sports.
| Sport | Brief description |
| Bull-baiting | A bull is positioned to enable several dogs to attack it with the bull ultimately being killed |
| Badger baiting | Entails placing dogs in a badger’s burrow with the intention of seeing which is the first to kill the badger (Smith, 2011) |
| Other animals used in baiting with dogs include bears, otters, horses, mules, monkeys, wallabies, kangaroos, lions. Racoon and baboon baiting was also noted by Fox (1888) | References to these kinds of baiting can be found in Scott (1820), Strutt (1875), Fox (1888) and Ash (1934) |
| Ratting | Normally a case of seeing how many rats a dog can kill in a set time but, according to Fitz-Barnard (1975), there have been instances where dogs and humans have been pitted against one another to see which can kill more rats |
| Earthdog | ‘Terriers run through a narrow tunnel in the ground that has wooden sides and ceiling and a dirt floor. At the end of the tunnel are caged rats, which the terriers must “work.” Working the prey may mean barking, growling or scratching at the cage’ (Mehus-Roes, 2009: 22). Mehus-Roes also mentions an emergent version of the sport called ‘strongdog’, which is for larger breeds and entails them dragging a stuffed badger skin out of the ground. These are ‘staged’ versions of the work to catch and kill vermin that was traditionally undertaken by terriers |
| Dog fights | Discussed in detail later in this chapter |
| Dog and man fights | ‘a man fighting a bull-dog with his fists. Both combatants were attached to stakes by a chain’ (Fitz-Barnard, 1975: 191) |
| Hare hunting | On horseback, with the use of hounds |
| Otter hunting | Was focused on freshwater otters and used Otter Hounds (bred specifically for the task). There were approximately 20 packs of hounds used for the sport in Great Britain in the early 1900s (Cameron, 1908) |
| Conger eel hunting | Reportedly occurred in Normandy, France (Jesse, 1866a) |
| The lesser chase, la petite chasse | The following have all been hunted using dogs ‘the BADGER, MARTEN CAT, and SQUIRREL; the POLECAT and STOAT’ as well as the wildcat (Scott, 1820: 445) |
| Fox hunting | Undertaken on horseback with a pack of Foxhounds |
| Fox hunting with fell hounds | Undertaken on foot due to the steepness and unevenness of the terrain in the wilder regions of the UK (Drabble, 1989) |
| Beagling | The use of a pack of beagles to hunt for hares on foot (Longman, 1896) |
| Truffle hunting | Reference is made to truffle dogs in as early as 1866 by Jesse (1886a) and also by Stonehenge in 1875. Today, although a variety of breeds of dog appear to be used to sniff out this fungus, the Lagotto Romagnolo appears to be most closely associated with the activity |
| Private hare coursing | The chasing of hares by hounds for the private indulgence of the owner |
| Public hare coursing | The chasing of hares by hounds in a public setting in which betting is a central feature. It is a more recent form of coursing than the private version |
| Enclosed public hare coursing |
Differentiated from public hare coursing in that the activity takes place in a fenced-in area. The popularity of the sport was short-lived in the late 1800s in the UK (Ash, 1935)
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