Slovakian Wirehaired Pointer

The breed is the work of Koloman Slimak, a Slovak breeder and cynologist who set out in the years after 1945 to build a versatile pointing dog suited to Slovak conditions. He crossed German Wirehaired Pointers with Weimaraners and the Czech Cesky Fousek, with some input from the Pudelpointer, aiming for a dog with the wire coat and toughness of the German breeds and the distinctive grey pigment of the Weimaraner.

The requirement he wrote for the breed was demanding: great stamina, a nose good enough to track wounded deer over cold lines, a firm point on birds, and a willingness to retrieve on land and in water. In central Europe versatile gundog breeds are tested rather than merely shown, and Slovak breeding regulations have long required dogs to pass field trials before being used for breeding. That has kept the working ability of the breed intact in a way that is unusual among modern creations.

International recognition came slowly. The FCI accepted the breed provisionally in the 1980s and granted full recognition in 1995, placing it in the Continental Pointing Dogs section of the gundog group. It remains outside full American Kennel Club recognition and is scarce everywhere outside its homeland, with small numbers established in Britain, Ireland, the United States and Scandinavia.

This is a substantial gundog. Males stand roughly 24 to 27 inches at the withers and females 22 to 25 inches, with weights generally in the range of 55 to 80 pounds. The frame is strong without being heavy, rectangular in outline, with a deep chest, well-muscled hindquarters and the balanced, driving trot you would expect from a dog built to quarter a field all day.

The coat is the breed's signature: a harsh, broken or rough jacket about one and a half to two inches long over the body, with a shorter coat on the head, a pronounced beard and bushy eyebrows, and a soft undercoat that thins out in summer. Colour is a distinctive tweedy grey-brown, ranging from a warm coffee-and-silver to a cool pewter, with darker or lighter markings permitted and small white marks allowed on the chest and feet. Puppies are born dark and the adult grey develops with age. The eyes are amber in the mature dog, the nose dark, and the tail is traditionally docked to about half its natural length where local law permits.

For a big, driven hunting dog the Slovakian Wirehaired Pointer is remarkably easy in the house. It is calm indoors once properly exercised, strongly attached to its family and notably gentle with children it has grown up alongside. Owners consistently describe a dog that wants to be in the same room as its people, and the breed does not cope well with being kennelled alone or left for long working days.

It is a cooperative worker by design. Unlike some independent-minded pointing breeds, this one keeps in touch with its handler and checks in naturally, which makes recall and field control considerably easier to build. It is intelligent, quick to learn, and sensitive enough that raised voices and heavy correction damage the relationship rather than improve compliance.

The reserve some individuals show towards strangers is normal for the breed rather than a fault, and a well-socialised dog is polite rather than suspicious. Prey drive is high, as it must be, and small pets in the house are a genuine consideration. The main behavioural risk with the breed is not aggression or stubbornness but boredom: an under-exercised, unemployed Slovakian Wirehaired Pointer becomes restless, vocal and destructive quickly.

In its own country the breed is used as a full versatile gundog. It quarters ground and points feathered game, works thick cover and reeds without complaint, retrieves reliably from land and water, and is particularly valued for blood tracking, following the cold trail of a wounded deer or boar for hours to bring the hunt to a humane conclusion. Slovak testing systems examine all of these skills, and dogs are expected to demonstrate them before breeding.

For an owner who does not shoot, the breed can be satisfied by sport rather than by walks. Tracking and mantrailing map directly onto its blood-tracking heritage and are the single best outlet. Gundog working tests, dummy retrieving, agility, canicross and long-distance hiking all suit it. It will alert to a stranger at the door and makes a serviceable watchdog, though it is far too friendly to be a protection dog. What it cannot do is live quietly in a flat on two short walks a day; this is a countryside dog with a countryside workload.