Guten Morgen!
We’ll hope you’ll excuse the Teutonic outburst, but we saw this Plott Hound and just couldn’t help ourselves. You can find Lyric on page 79 of this week’s issue; she’s Griffin Pond Animal Shelter‘s featured pet of the week. We hadn’t seen this particular type of dog featured before, and a little research turned up the very interesting history behind this breed.
She’s really one-of-a-kind: of the seven registered breeds of coonhounds, the Plott Hound is the only one whose ancestry is not traced back to the foxhound. Used in Germany for generations to track boar (!), ancestors of this hunting dog showed up on our shores in 1750 when Johannes Plott emigrated to the US and brought a number of these dogs with him. Because Johannes settled in what’s now North Carolina and developed the breed there, the Plott Hound became strongly identified with that state and is known to this day as the state dog of the Tar Heel State.
Every dog’s got its history, so be sure to check out each week’s featured dog in our Pets & Supplies category.