Rogues blog deerhounds.blogspot.com/ had a fascinating but long article thurs about Charles Darwin and his correspondence re: Scotch Dog. I was very taken with the idea of deerhound and other breeds love this day before Valentines.
Does any one have a deerhound love story to share?

Food for thought when thinking about breeding.
Also of interest and published in The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. VOL II comes reference to deerhounds under the PREFERENCES IN PAIRING. CHAP. XVII. as follows . . .

As so little is known about the courtship of animals in a state of nature, I have endeavoured to discover how far our domesticated quadrupeds evince any choice in their unions. Dogs offer the best opportunity for observation, as they are carefully attended to and well understood. Many breeders have expressed a strong opinion on this head. Thus Mr. Mayhew remarks, "The females are able to bestow their affections; and tender recollections are as potent over them as they are known to be in other cases, where higher animals are concerned. Bitches are not always prudent in their loves, but are apt to fling themselves away on curs of low degree. If reared with a companion of vulgar appearance, there often springs up between the pair a devotion which no time can afterwards subdue. The passion, for such it really is, becomes of a more than romantic endurance." Mr. Mayhew, who attended chiefly to the smaller breeds, is convinced that the females are strongly attracted by males of large size.41 The well-known veterinary Blaine states42 that his own female pug became so attached to a spaniel, and a female setter to a cur, that in neither case would they pair with a dog of their own breed until several weeks had elapsed. Two similar and trustworthy accounts have been given me in regard to a female retriever and a spaniel, both of which became enamoured with terrier-dogs.

Mr. Cupples informs me that he can personally vouch for the accuracy of the following more remarkable case, in which a valuable and wonderfully-intelligent female terrier loved a retriever, belonging to a neighbour, to such a degree that she had often to be dragged away from him. After their permanent separation, although repeatedly shewing milk in her teats, she would never acknowledge the courtship of any other dog, and to the regret of her owner, never bore puppies. Mr. Cupples also states that a female deerhound now (1868) in his kennel has thrice produced puppies, and on each occasion shewed a marked preference for one of the largest and handsomest, but not the most eager, of four deer-hounds living with her, all in the prime of life. Mr. Cupples has observed that the female generally favours a dog whom she has associated with and knows; her shyness and timidity at first incline her against a strange dog. The male, on the contrary, seems rather inclined towards strange females.