Bloodhound Profile

history

Dogs that hunt by scent have been known for millennia. Reports of dogs that "discover and trace out the tracks of the animal" date as far back as the first century AD. It was in medieval Europe, however, that the dogs began to be developed into the scenthound we know today as the Bloodhound.

The first actual reference to the breed by that name was in a poem by Sir Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, titled William of Palerne (1350). It depicts a dog, called a Bloodhound, as a careful hunter who is on the trail of two lovers disguised as bears.

From that poem, we can deduce that the name Bloodhound was a familiar word in the English language. The name comes from the dogs' status as an aristocratic breed kept by noblemen and abbots; in other words, it was a "blooded" hound.

These early scenthounds were known as St. Hubert hounds, bred by the monks of St. Hubert's Abbey, and they were the ancestors of today's Bloodhounds. During his life, Francois Hubert (656-727) was a passionate hunter who made it his life's work to breed dogs capable of following old, or cold, trails, an occupation he maintained even after retiring to a monastery following the death of his wife.

After his death, he was canonized and became the patron saint of hunters. In France, you will still hear Bloodhounds referred to as St. Hubert hounds.

For several centuries after Hubert's death, his hounds flourished. William the Conqueror took them to England when he invaded in 1066. They were highly prized gifts among monarchs and nobles. Elizabeth I, a noted huntress, kept packs of St. Hubert hounds, and Shakespeare described a dog that could only have been one in his play "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

But a thousand years after their beginning, the St. Hubert hounds were brought low by the French Revolution. With the aristocracy fled and the chateaus in ruins, the great hunts were no more.

Fortunately for the breed, they were still prized in England, not only for the skills in the hunt, but also for their ability to track down wrongdoers. The first written record of Bloodhounds tracking thieves and poachers was in 1805, although stories of their use for that purpose date to the 16th century.

They also benefited from three Victorian-era trends: the rise of dog shows, the new status of dogs as companions, and a society that loved anything exotic or unusual. They had as well the patronage of dog-loving Queen Victoria, who entered one of her Bloodhounds in a dog show in 1869.

England is where the modern Bloodhound was developed, but the breed had also made its way to America in colonial times. In a letter, Benjamin Franklin expressed an interest in acquiring some Bloodhounds to track down marauding Indians.

Through no fault of his own, the Bloodhound's reputation took a whipping during the Civil War, thanks to the breed's depiction as vicious beasts in Harriet Beecher Stowe's antislavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Interest in them waned until 1888 when three English Bloodhounds competed in the Westminster Kennel Club show. Wealthy Americans took an interest in them and began breeding them again, producing some very fine dogs.

Today, the Bloodhound is employed primarily by law enforcement agencies as a mantrailer or for search and rescue work. They are an uncommon breed, ranking 45th among the 155 breeds and varieties registered by the American Kennel Club.

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