Water Spaniels – Origins, Development and Modernization by projectupland.com On The Go published on 2024-01-30T00:13:07Z Water spaniels are but a vestige of what they once were. Originally developed in the British Isles for waterfowl retrieving, today only three breeds remain. The American Water Spaniel and its close cousin, the , are joined by the as remnants of what was once a broad spectrum of water dogs. The origin of water spaniels can be traced to Great Britain. Similar dogs were developed on the European continent, such as the Épagneul de Pont-Audemer or the , but their exact relationship to the true water spaniels developed in the British Isles—and later in America—is not exactly clear. What is clear is that a close relationship exists between water spaniels and the retriever breeds. Indeed, recent genome-wide analysis has revealed that the and the Irish Water Spaniel are more closely related to each other than to any other breed. The Curly-Coated Retriever—the largest and perhaps oldest of the retrievers—is thought to have descended from crosses between the and English Water Spaniels, but apparently the amount of water spaniel blood in the breed was largely underestimated. Similarly, the Golden Retriever lineage that began with the Marjoribanks family in Scotland included crosses to at least two Tweed Water Spaniels.