Fancy is as fancy does
UNMISTAKABLE is the note of polite consternation that colours Aleks Wasowska’s response to my question about her dogs’ obedience. Those in question—3½-year-old silver bitch L’Eau and 2½-year-old white bitch Breagh—are standard poodles and, increasingly, familiar fixtures on shoots close to their owner’s home near Ely in Cambridgeshire. Both dogs happily pick up pheasant, partridge and duck, she tells me, in all weather and covering all terrain. Miss Wasowska describes L’Eau in pursuit of duck as ‘an absolute machine in water’, whereas Breagh, from an old Scottish working line of standard poodles, resembles ‘a bulldozer through covert, although she is less nimble in water’.
The standard poodle is no longer an everyday sight in the shooting field. Indeed, although the breed remains popular on the Continent and in the
