English Pointers

The English pointer can be the most noble, elegant and impressive of all bird dogs. It’s a breed which demands to have the absolute beauty to go with their working abilities. A lot of pointers unfortunately don’t have that noble elegance, and completely misses out on the x-factor.

I dare suggest, that the highest quality of dual purpose pointers in the 20th century came from Denmark. Especially from the 1930s – 1980s their pointers were in high demand all over the world.

The pointers from Denmark boosted the blood lines from the Arctic to the Vatican to the Shah of Iran. Italy got hold of some offsprings from the French top dog Xocrate du Harlay and imported several Danish dogs to mix with their blood lines. Most importantly probably through the kennels Clastidium and del Bocia. Countries like France, Germany, Belgium and Holland followed this up. During the past 50 years Italy and France have produced some stunning pointers, both with the right looks and top functional working abilities. There is also today excellent pointer material to be found in Scandinavia.

As with all the other breeds Britain of course split the pointers between show- and field trial dogs. Some of the worst looking pointers I’ve ever seen I saw in Britain, which was most disappointing. The best looking pointer I saw in England had been dead for nearly 100 years, stuffed and on display in a museum, which was William Arkwright’s champion Sea Breeze who died in 1905.

Still there are good pointers left in Britain, and some of those lines have made their way to Australia and New Zealand as well. Here in New Zealand Joy Broughton Mortensen (Wingfield) did a huge job breeding and handling pointers to top results, among others using stock from Sparkfield and Innistona. In recent years there have been imported dogs with a lot of Spinningloch blood, with some Italian Veronello / del Bocia blood in the back of the pedigrees.

All the dogs above had the same mother: Agertoften Isabella, who was trained and handled by Jørgen Andersen and myself.