The Small Munsterlander
By Paul Jensen
Jaegerbakkens Kennel
The Small Munsterlander has as its origin, just like the other pointing breeds and the flushing dogs. Even though the Small Munsterlander belongs to one of the newest dog breeds, we can still find its origin in the 13th and 14th century. In the beginning of the1400s authors described breeding of "Spagnell" and about the year 1500 a pointing spaniel is mentioned. Sebitz characterized in 1580 the "Wachtelhund" (quail dog, or possibly meaning bird dog) as having a good search and a staunch point. In paintings made by French, Italian and Dutch masters in the 17th century we find dogs that remind us of today’s Small Munsterlander. These dogs have survived centuries of changes. They were found in greatest concentration in the areas of Germany called Munsterland, Bergischland and Westfalen.
It wasn’t until about 1897 that concentrated breeding was initiated. It was Friedrich Robert who started it, but the real pioneers were the brothers Herman, Rudolf and in particular Edmund Lons. Edmund Lons searched untiringly in an effort to find a breeding basis for this bird dog that many thought were extinct. These dogs, that Edmund Lons called Heidewachtel had been kept on a few distant farms. The owners had conducted strict line breeding with the primary emphasis on the hunting abilities of the dogs and to avoid cross breeding they had only kept one bitch, which could ensure the breed’s survival. Newly born females were culled, while the male dogs were either given away or sold. Only in cases where the line’s survival was in danger did the farmer keep an additional female pup. In addition to Lons the following people and their kennels Baron von Beverforde (von Loburg), Wilhelm Heckhoff (vom Westerberg), Gastwirt Osterhaus (vom Nettethal), and Anton Bartscher (von Osnabruck) , worked on breeding programs to develop and maintain a small and well put together line of these dogs from Westfalen.
Edmund Lons in cooperation with Dr. Jungklaus worked tirelessly to improve the breed and they came in contact with schoolteacher Heitman in 1907 and found in his dogs the basis for a breeding program.
Mr. Heitmann of Burgsteinfurt had kept the remains of the bird dogs from Westfalen and by line breeding since 1877 had ensured their continuation by always keeping a female dog and only letting her procreate with a male dog with great hunting abilities, when he needed to replace his female. He even used the German Longhair as sire on his bitches and only kept a bitch that showed the Small Munsterlander’s traits and coloration. The use of the German Longhair was stopped around 1902. Mr. Heitmann called the dog "The little Spy" or " The Magister dog."
In 1911 Edmund Lons learned that another line of dogs had been bred in the area around Velen, Recken, Coesfeld and Dorsten. That meant that they now had two lines on which to continue the breeding. Edmund Lons and Heitman cooperated in this effort. They would continue both line breeding and cross breeding between the two lines.
The two lines were different both in ability and build. In 1917 Edmund Lons wrote the following about the breed characteristics for the dogs from the Heitmann line. "It is an elegant, nice looking dog, short in the back, long legged with a great gait, plenty of smooth hair and with beautiful feathers on the tail. The head is long, and the nose often shows a slight downward curve. The mouth is strong, moderately full, but never short. The ears are small, about middle-length, with good coat and they give the head a refined expression; they are set high and at the bottom they become pointed and they are carried forward. The eyes are dark brown, not too small, good closure and they give the dog a pretty and trustworthy expression." The height of the dogs was from 38 to 50 cm and none of them showed a distinct forehead stop.
In 1922 Lons wrote the following about the Dorsten line: "It’s an excellent looking dog with a great chest, front legs and shoulders. The back is a little longer than the Heitmann dogs’, the mouth is straight with tight lips and appears a little more pointed. They have beautiful brown eyes, well-formed ears, good coat and a beautiful tail with feathers and is an excellent expressive bird dog." The Dorsten dogs were slightly taller than the Heitmann dogs, often mostly around 50 cm and they had in opposition to the Heitmann dogs a distinct forehead stop.
The basic color for both lines was white with more or less brown patches. Around 1926 the cross breeding to German Longhair developed the roan color. Today you will find both brown/white and roan dogs equally distributed. The "Small Munsterlander Pointer Club (Heidewachtel)" was formed in 1912 and its first President was Anton Bartscher.
One of the individuals that worked with Edmund Lons in the furtherance of the breed was Dr. Jungklaus. In 1921 Dr. Friedrich Jungklaus wrote the book "Der Kleiner Munsterlander Vorstehhund als Jagd- und Haushund" in which he used Goethes "Faust" to promote this little hunting dog. In 1922 Edmund Lons wrote "Der Heidewachtel, Kleiner Munsterlander Vorstehhund oder Spion."
Over the first twenty years of the 1900s the interest in the breed increased and different breeders were fascinated with height, color, and sharpness. This fascination among different breeders and eventual cross breeding have resulted in dogs today being born that can show the different characteristics even in one litter. This is not a fault at bench shows. Politics also played a role in the development of the dog resulting in the formation of two breed clubs.
During World War II a damper was placed on the breeding of dogs. It wasn’t until 1949 that it again was possible to start serious breeding which also resulted in a union of the two clubs that had been operating between the two world wars, namely "Deutche Heidewachtel Club" and "Verein fur Kleine Munsterlander Vorstehhunde." The new club became "Verband fur Kleine MunsterlanderVorstehhunde" which motto to this day is "health, performance, character and form." The individuals that saved the remains of the breed were Erik Gablenz, Herman Brene, August Fleddermann and Heing Wicke. Another very excited breeder was Karl Braunschweig, who fled from Osten towards the end of the war with his wife bringing with him some basic supplies and a puppy hidden in a rucksack. This flight was carried out with great danger to them all but they succeeded in getting to Denmark where they hid the puppy on a boat in Jutland. Later the family was placed in a prisoner of war camp, where the guards of the camp after much discussion enrolled the dog in its guard dog service. Many a person and Small Munsterlander owner have been grateful that this dog was saved. She became the birth mother of the "Mein Kleiner Kerl" dogs.
Even though dogs were exported in the early years for high prices to many countries, such as Holland, Denmark and the United States, serious breeding would wait in those countries for many years. The Small Munsterlander was first imported to Denmark in 1955 and it took approximately 10 years before it found its place as a hunting dog in Denmark. Anna-Lis Fischer imported Dania Mein Kleiner Kerl and had several litters, but they could only be sold as pets since no hunter seemed interested in taking on this "new" breed. Her next import was Freya vom Birkenfeld, which arrived in 1963. It was run in a field trial by a game warden after just four days of training and she received a Prize I in competition with the other continental breeds. Freya thus became the first field-prized dog in Denmark and therefore responsible for the eventual recognition of the breed as a hunting breed. In the ensuing years Anna-Lis Fischer was joined by other importers and on May 4, 1968, the Danish Munsterlander Club was formed.
My wife Vibeke and I saw the Small Munsterlanders in the latter part of the 1960s where we lived north of Copenhagen, Denmark. We decided that when our present poodle had to be replaced it would have to be with a hunting dog, a Small Munsterlander. In 1970 we immigrated to the United States. We didn’t have time to think of a new dog until 1973 when we imported our first Small Munsterlander. We soon found that many people were very interested in our dog and we thought about finding an acceptable stud for our Misty. Before going this far we attended a seminar about "The Dog in Motion." It was a very interesting seminar given by Rachel Page Elliot, a local well known golden retriever breeder, show and conformation judge. Vibeke and I were so excited about what we had learned that when we got home that evening we immediately took Misty out on a lead and paraded her in front of each other under the street lamps. We studied Misty’s gait from the front, from the sides and from the back. After about 20 minutes or so we decided that Misty was not a good representative for the breed and we should not let her become the birth mother of a new breed of dogs in North America.
During a winter vacation in Denmark we searched and found what we considered a great birth mother. She was born on second Christmas day in 1974 and we named her Bliss. During the next two years we watched her grow up and in July 1975 our male dog Chris was born. Both dogs grew up to be nice representatives of the breed. Wherever we would go people would stop us and ask about what breed of dog these were. Everybody seemed so interested in these dogs that we chanced to breed them and Bliss gave birth to the first recorded litter of Small Munsterlanders in North America on April 12, 1977. We selected a kennel name of Jaegerbakken, which is the Danish translation of the road name where we live: Hunters Ridge Road. During the next two months our hearts were full of joy over these wonderful bouncing puppies. The joy and excitement was replaced with the sadness of having to let the puppies go to new homes and then to frustration when we were not able to find buyers for our dogs. (It seems like we were repeating the experience Anna-Lis Fischer had had in Denmark nearly twenty years before.)
The last of the puppies was about 4 months of age before we found a home for him. All the folks that had expressed such an interest in the dogs when they first saw them weren’t interested when we had the puppies and other people kept asking if these dogs were registered with AKC. They were not. During a visit that I made to the AKC office in New York I learned the following:
AKC would want somebody to take charge of a registry that could be the basis for them if and when the time was right. From the conversation it was also clear that such a new registry should only accept dogs that had import pedigrees issued by the FCI accepted breed clubs in Europe. The Small Munsterlander Clubs in Europe require that the parents of puppies have qualified in field tests and have obtained at least a Prize 2 in conformation show. They shall also have been x-rayed and declared hip dysplasia free.
Vibeke and I weren’t ready to produce more new puppies due to the response we got from the buying public, it also would have been impossible for us to do anything but a repeat breeding of Chris and Bliss which we decided not to do. Our first litter consisted of 5 males! We had anticipated and hoped for some female puppies in that litter so we purchased and imported Peto’s Alpha to serve the upcoming female puppies about 1 month before the puppies were born. Obviously, the best-laid plans don’t always work out. Over the next two years we were again often asked about our dogs and also if they were good hunting dogs. We told people that they were but based on our experience with the first litter we also realized that we needed some type of third person recognition that these dogs were in reality hunting dogs. By happenstance we were asked to participate in a dog seminar at the University of New Hampshire in Dover, NH in the spring of 1977. Since Bliss was with the puppies we brought Chris and Alpha to the meeting and gave a presentation about the breed. At that very same seminar another person spoke about NAVHDA and we got together and talked. Vibeke and I decided to join that organization and the following spring we were the first to test two Small Munsterlanders in a NAVHDA Natural Ability test. We had never trained a hunting dog before so we were quite excited when we on a frigid April day in 1978 qualified both dogs. Peto’s Alpha was 14 months and Bliss was at that time 2 ½ years so she was tested as "Evaluation only." It was such a cold day that we had to break ice on the pond for the Natural Ability swimming tests. In September of 1982 Peto’s Alpha also became the first Small Munsterlander to qualify in the NAVHDA Utility test.
Mr. William Ziegler, a Brigadier General with the British Control Commission in Germany in 1951 purchased a dog by the name of Valepp, that was brought to Canada when the family returned after Mr. Ziegler’s duty was served. Mr. Ziegler later imported Brando vom Andehl in 1975, but he never bred either dogs. Tom McDonald imported Elko in 1971 and Timmy in 1979 and had a litter of puppies in 1980. Hans Peiper imported Conni von Andehl and Cindy von Luhe in 1976 and had a litter of puppies in 1980. Goetz Schurholz imported Ute vom Roemersee in 1978 and Pollux vom Birkenbusch 1983 and had his first litter in 1984. Goetz Schurholz would have a total of five litters on these two imported dogs during the next 3 ½ years. Among them was Cowichan Bay’s Dromas or as we call her, Breezy. As these puppies were sold more people became interested in the breed but the greatest interest was spurred when the article "The Small Munsterlander Pointer" which I wrote was published in the Gun Dog magazine, March-April 1985 issue, Volume 4, Number 4. Within the next few months we received more than 200 inquiries about the breed and to this day – 18 years later - we still receive calls from people that want further information about our dogs.
In an effort to respond to all these inquiries we developed a brochure that went further than the article in the magazine and we mailed it along with several pages of answers to questions that people would ask us. With the advent of the Internet we can now refer inquiries to our Web site www.jaegerbakken.com. Since our first litter in 1977 more than 170 litters have been born and more than 1200 puppies have seen their first light in North America. More than 300 dogs have been tested in NAVHDA Natural Ability field test (10% of these dogs have continued onto the NAVHDA Utility test) and approximately 75% have qualified which compares well with all the other breeds normally tested in NAVHDA.
Over the years more than 80 dogs have been imported from Germany, Denmark and the Czeck Republic. They have given us the base on which it has been possible to build and from which to continue our growth of this wonderful longhaired and long tailed hunting dog.
The Small Munsterlander owners were in 1979 invited to become members of the Large Munsterlander Club of North America and a Small Munsterlander Club of North America was established in March of 1993. To read more about the club and articles written about hunting experiences with the dog you can visit the Web site www.smallmunsterlander.org.