The founding reference of the American dog fancy: 47 breeds, described by the men who imported them, judged them and wrote their standards.
Published in 1891, seven years after the American Kennel Club was founded, The American Book of the Dog is a vast multi-author survey - over 700 pages - edited by the sportsman-editor G. O. Shields, who wrote as Coquina and called it the grandest work on the dog ever published. Each breed chapter is the work of a leading specialist of the day, and covers origin and development, characteristics, utility, breeding, training, the points of judging, diseases and kennel management.
It is the record of an entire fancy at the moment it organised itself - bench shows, field trials, the first standards - and it remains a primary source for the early history of almost every breed then established in America.
This edition features:
- Forty-seven breeds, each treated by a leading specialist of the day
- Over 700 pages on origin, characteristics, utility, breeding, judging and kennel management
- A primary record of the American fancy in the decade after the Kennel Club was founded
- Bench shows, field trials and the first breed standards, described by the men who made them
