Turnspit
The Turnspit was an extinct British kitchen dog, sometimes called a turnspit dog or vernepator cur, bred for the very specific job of running inside a wheel that turned meat over an open fire. Descriptions from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries portray a low, long-bodied dog with short, often crooked legs and a tough constitution. It was a servant's working animal rather than a pet breed in the modern sense, and its decline followed the spread of mechanical spit-turning devices and changing household labor.
No living Turnspit population exists for owners or breeders to acquire, so the breed is mainly studied through period writing, illustrations, and a few museum references. Its history is useful for understanding how domestic dogs were once shaped by narrow labor roles, including jobs now viewed through a welfare lens. People researching Turnspits should be cautious about modern dogs advertised under the name; similar body shapes in dachshunds, corgis, or mixed breeds do not make them descendants of a preserved Turnspit line.
Colors: Albino, Apricot, Bicolor, Black, Black and Tan, Black and White, Black Mask, Blue, Blue and Tan, Blue Merle, Blue Roan, Blue Tick, Brindle, Brown, Brown and Tan, Brown and White, Chocolate, Cream, Dapple, Domino, Fawn, Fawn and White, Gold, Gray, Grey, Harlequin, Irish Marked, Leucistic, Liver, Liver Mask, Mantle, Mask, Melanistic, Merle, Mottled, Parti-Color, Piebald, Red, Red and White, Red Merle, Red Roan, Red Tick, Reverse Brindle, Roan, Sable, Saddle, Silver, Speckled, Spotted, Tan, Ticked, Tricolor, Tuxedo, White, Yellow
