We adopted Emmett from AnimalSave back in October 2005, and he’s been a great member of the Krugler pack. He seems to be a mix of sighthound and Labrador – in other words, he’s a mutt.
But one day, while Jenna and I were speculating about what kind of sighthound would give him his deep chest and curled tail, I did a search on “greyhound labrador mix”, and found out that we’d been wrong all these years.
He’s not a mutt, he’s a lurcher!
What’s a lurcher? Well, according to Wikipedia (source of all truth and goodness) a lurcher is:
a hardy, crossbred sighthound, generally a cross between a sighthound and any other breed…the lurcher was bred in Ireland and Great Britain by the Irish Gypsies and travellers in the 17th century. They were used for poaching rabbits, hares and other small creatures. The name lurcher is derived from the Romani language word lur, which means thief.
There’s even a new group called the North American Lurcher & Longdog Association. It’s a bit hard to tell, but I think Emmett is very excited about the possibility of membership.
He’s a beautiful dog.
We recently adopted a dog off the street that we believe is a lurcher as well (click here for pics). We got him at the beginning of June when he was two months old (the oldest pictures). He’s about 4 and a half months old now and growing bigger every day. We believe he is a shepherd-greyhound mix.
Have you joined The NALLA? I’m thinking of doing that.
Hi Doohickie,
I’d heard about the NALLA while researching lurchers for my blog post, but I hadn’t joined.
Thanks for the reminder, I’ll look into that again.
– Ken