The Boykin Spaniel

This dog was bred to fit in a boat. Around 1900, a banker in Spartanburg, South Carolina was walking to church when a small brown stray fell in behind him. He took the dog home and named him Dumpy.

Dumpy turned out to be a retriever, so the banker sent him to a hunting partner near Camden, a man named Whit Boykin. Boykin and his friends hunted ducks and wild turkeys in the watery river swamp. They got in by boat, and the boats were small.

A big retriever did not fit. They needed a dog that could find birds, flush them, swim for them, and then sit still in a boat barely wide enough for one man. So Whit Boykin bred one.

You can pick him out anywhere. Thirty to forty pounds. A solid coat, rich liver or dark chocolate, flat on some dogs and curly on others, with feathering on the ears, the chest, and the legs.

Yellow to brown eyes that match the coat, and a short, docked tail. They call him the little brown dog that doesn't rock the boat. He still does the job he was built for, and more.

He hunts close, inside gun range, in a spaniel's pattern. He will flush pheasant, quail, and other upland birds, then swim for a duck and deliver it to hand, into the boat or the blind. The Boykin Spaniel Society runs its own hunt tests for him, upland and retriever both.

At home, he is friendly, eager to please, and easy to live with. Today, the Boykin Spaniel is the state dog of South Carolina.

From THE BREED REEL, KENAI's Sunday series on Instagram. Every fact in it is traced to the breed's standard, its parent club, or a named history; nothing came from memory.