Many pointing dog breeds have been lost to history. Craig Koshyk thought that the Majorcan Pointer was another one that only lived on today in books and stories. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. Below is a bit of what he discovered about the breed.

This excerpt comes from Craig’s book Pointing Dogs, Volume One: The Continentals, the most thorough and authoritative work available on the history of continental Europe’s pointing breeds. If you love hunting dogs, it’s a book you have to have.

The Majorcan Pointer, from Craig Koshyk’s Pointing Dog blog

“Of all the breeds I’ve seen and studied, the Majorcan Pointer came as the biggest surprise. Despite finding a good number of historical references to it in the old literature, I was unable to determine if the Balearic Islands’ native pointing breed was still being bred today. And since Googling its name in English, French and Spanish only turned up the same old quotes from same old books, for a long time I assumed that the breed was extinct.

But only a few weeks before flying to Spain to photograph Burgos Pointers and Pachónes Navarro, I decided to give it one more shot. This time the words I entered into the Google search field were in Catalan, the other official language of the island of Majorca. I typed ca de mostra and ca de caça, then hit return. Less than an hour later I was on the phone to Sheryl Marchand, my very understanding travel agent, telling her that Lisa and I would need to extend the Spanish leg of our trip. Majorca’s native pointing dog was still alive!”

You can read the entire piece here: The Majorcan Pointer, from Craig Koshyk’s Pointing Dog blog.