M. J. Night Watch Traymar Brave One, CGC, JHF, JHR ("Braedon") at 11 months of age at the 2005 Airedale National Hunt Test. It was at this test that two AKC spaniel judges remarked that Braedon would have turned heads at any AKC spaniel hunt test.

If you ask the hunting Airedale folks, the correct answer to the question posed in the headline is actually, (D) all of the above. However, if you ask this same question of some of the folks in the performance division at the American Kennel Club, the answer would be, (E) none of the above.

In the view of some within the AKC, the Airedale is a fur and varmint hunter, not a bird hunter. With the Airedale Terrier Club of America's Hunting and Working Committee stubbornly insisting that the dogs are in fact wonderful bird dogs, a fair question would be how two such supposedly knowledgeable entities as the ATCA's Hunting and Working Committee and the American Kennel Club can be so far apart in their positions on this issue. And, whose picture of the breed is correct?

A brief look at the breed's history might prove useful in providing an answer. Airedales were created to be do-everything hunters for people in the Aire Valley in Yorkshire, England. While much of the breed's early work was hunting river rats, Airedales also were employed as bird finders and retrievers when residents of the valley did a little poaching on the estates of the landed gentry.

Most likely produced from crosses of the old Broken-Coated Terrier with Otterhounds (although it is possible other breeds were also included in the mix that ultimately resulted in the Airedale), the breed was originally known as the Waterside Terrier. It later came to be called the Bingley Terrier. Not until 1879 was it finally called an Airedale.

The versatility of this breed, while viewed as a blessing by those who hunt with their dogs, has actually hindered efforts to get the Airedale recognized as a useful bird hunter.

Ch. M.J. Night Watch Traymar Braveheart, CGC, JHF, JHFur ("Trace"), one of Steve and Bonnie Gilbert's Airedales, explodes off the line on a land mark at a hunt test in Wisconsin.

But historically, in both the U.S. and England, Airedales have been used to hunt birds as well as fur, much the same as all the continental breeds were developed for and have been used for both fur and feather hunting. In 1916, Warren Miller wrote in The American Hunting Dog, "On the borderline between the bird dog and the fur dog stands the Airedale, the dog that can hunt both."

Certainly it is true that early American hunters used the Airedale frequently as a bird hunter and there are many references to the breed as a bird dog in the periodicals of that era. For example, in the May 1909 issue of Country Life in America, in a story titled "A Brief for the Airedale Terrier," the author wrote, "The hunting instinct is very strong in the Airedale...The writer has found few dogs better equipped for shooting in covert or in the open. The Airedale's speed, endurance and imperviousness to climatic conditions fit him for bird hunting. He loves the water and can stay in it by the hour on the coldest winter day without suffering any ill effects from it so he makes an ideal dog for snipe or to retrieve ducks and geese."

In the March 1921 issue of Outing, a story titled "Airedales and Their Training," said, "The Airedale makes an excellent retriever, particularly from water. I am aware that many old duck shooters scorn the idea and argue that the setter has no equal. But facts are stubborn things and it has been positively proved that the Airedale often equals any setter. Here again his innate courage is an advantage; he will unflinchingly meet conditions that make a setter hesitate and consequently will reach the bird quicker.

Though he does not possess the Chesapeake Bay retriever's coat, he is fully as ready to enter cold water."