The old adage that "a prophet is not without honor save in his own country" holds good in canine matters as it does in humanity. Take the Newfoundland, for instance. The breed was supposed to have originated on this continent. Somebody in Englaud got hold of several good specimens and began to "boom" them. The type of a flat-coated, low-skulled, brainless brute was started and every other sort condemned. The consequence is that the English critics who write the majority of our show reports say in regard to the Newfoundland classes: "The usual number of black nondescripts were shown; the judge good-naturedly awarded first prize (which ought to have been withheld) to a big, curly-coated, black brute." The result is that the curly-coated, agile, intelligent animal called a "cur" is tabooed, and prizes are given to a "type" that never existed in America and is never seen except as an English emigrant or descendant from one. But then everything we have in this country (except our independence) is copied after our English cousins. Why should we not permit them to establish "types" for our native dogs. We do not appear to have snap enough to do it ourselves.
I once owned the Newfoundland Champion Milo. He was of the English type, flat-coated, little-brained and small in size. He was tolerated by the judges and won over a baker's dozen of first honors. A less-witted brute never existed. He had not sense enough to seek shade when the sun shone (Newfoundlands are supposed to be in their element when it rains). Ben Lewis picked him up in New Orleans. He had no known pedigree and was supposed to have come direct from the island of Newfoundland on a fishing craft, as fishing smacks from that port seldom, if ever, go as far south as New Orleans. It is more than probable that he came from England or the continent of Europe. 1 am quite sure he was not born on this side of the Atlantic. (169)