Often, when people first learn of our breed, they assume it must be a newly-created breed. While yes, the breed was not accepted into AKC until 2018, it is actually much, MUCH older than the AKC itself, and even the Victorian-era concept of dog breeds. Mentions of Kooiker-like dogs, which we refer to spioens, can be found in northwestern Europe and England as early as the 1200s.

Landrace Origins

Modern kooikerhondjes were developed from a landrace in northwestern Europe. A landrace is not a breed but a genetically loosely-related group of dogs in a limited geographical area who are classified by their functional traits – what they DO, rather than whether or not they conform to any specific physical standard. Think dogs classified into broad groups like “shepherds” or “livestock guard dogs” instead of specifically being called “Border Collies” or “Anatolian Shepherds.” (Wisdom Panel has a great article on landraces here.)

Kooikers, although their modern name basically means “the dog that works the duck trap” (very landrace-y!) were not called that in a highly-specific way until the modern era. However, it is important to remember that when we discuss the breed being old, we are referring to the very ancient origins of this type of work in these areas being done by dogs belonging to the landrace that was later standardized into the modern definition of a breed – these forebears did not call them Kooikerhondjes. While these ancient landrace dogs are clearly the ancestors of the Kooikers in our homes today, we do not have pedigrees or genetics going back further than their 20th century formation as a breed to prove this, as the modern concept of a “breed” is quite recent.

The Dutch refer to this pre-formal-breed landrace as the “Spioen.” As English has no translation of this, in the Kooiker community we defer to this terminology. You’ll notice the word is clearly related to “spaniel” however, and we use it to refer to Kooiker-like landrace dogs that appear in art and literature from the time period before the 20th century breed standardization. “Spioen” refers to a parti-colored, furnished spaniel-size dog originating in northwestern Europe and England that was intended to work an eendenkooi or decoy, control vermin, alert to intruders, and be a faithful companion. Thus, while you will see plenty of mentions of Kooikerhondjes in the paintings of Dutch Masters, it would be more correct to call them spioens, as the painters themselves and their contemporaries would not have called them Kooikers.

Eendenkooi/Decoy Work

The primary ancestral work of spioens/Kooikerhondjes was to work the eendenkooi, or duck decoy. This was – and still is – a method of catching large numbers of ducks without resorting to shooting. The eendenkooi infrastructure allowed the human kooiker (duck trapper/hunter) to essentially farm wild and semi-wild ducks on a single body of water and ensure a continuous supply for market. English-language descriptions from the 1200s make mention of Kings John and Edward enforcing restrictions on duck decoy hunting. By the 1400s, English decoys were well-established based on their Dutch blueprints, and there is a case in 1432 of an armed mob stealing 600 birds from a decoy in Lincolnshire.

Why this works is detailed in an 1882 book “The book of duck decoys,” the full text of which can be found here: “I consider the ducks believe a dog to be in some sort a fox, or nearly related. A fox-coloured dog, with a good brush [bushy tail], is always a successful Decoy dog, if he otherwise does his work well. Ducks therefore follow dogs and foxes from curiosity, from hatred, as well as from braggadocio, and also because when he retires from them they imagine that for once in a way they are driving off a cruel oppressor – natural enemy. They flatter themselves that their bold looks and assembled numbers bring about this satisfactory result.”

While it cannot be definitively determined when spioens/Kooiker ancestors were first utilized to hunt eendenkoois, they continued this niche work for at least 800 years on their quiet ponds in the Low Countries, Germany and England. As laws were enacted restricting sale of wild-caught game animals, and simultaneously as firearm technology improved, this method of “farming” and catching ducks waned, as did the need for dogs of this landrace to work the eendenkoois. However, working eendenkoois still exist today in multiple countries, so it can never be said that they ever truly disappeared. Art through the ages continued to depict spioens in domestic and duck-hunting scenes, and photos as above show recognizable Kooiker-like dogs working on eendenkoois in the 1930s. As eendenkooi work waned, dogs from this landrace were increasingly retasked as pets and generic farm dogs, and developed an association with the Dutch people both as a working man’s dog, and as a race owned by the admittedly-egalitarian elite (exemplified by the famous story of a Kooiker/spioen named Kuntze saving Willem van Oranje’s life from a Spanish assassin in the 1500s!).

Breed Creation

During World War II, Baroness van Hardenbroek van Ammerstol took it upon herself to save the remaining members of this landrace and develop it into a “breed” in the Victorian way we know it today – with a standardized appearance and a studbook. Motivated by Dutch nationalism during World War II (there’s a reason she kept only the orange puppies!) she gathered examples of this landrace scattered around the Dutch countryside and began a breeding and record-keeping program. One can see in the 1930s eendenkooi photos the type of dogs that were working at the time and from which she was breeding: a type that had already settled into the phenotype we know today. All modern Kooikerhondjes descend from these original founders that the Baroness identified and bred. It was also the Baroness who settled on the name Kooikerhondje for the breed. In the 60s, the breed club was formalized and Kooikerhondjes were first recognized by the Dutch Kennel Club. In this way, it would be correct to state that the breed itself did not exist under this name until the 20th century, but it would not be correct to assume that the modern Kooiker breed was created from a mix of known other breeds, or was NOT merely the standardization of a landrace that shared an approximate physical appearance and working traits for hundreds of years prior.