The Pre-1600 Poodle,
   Clips 

Despite the extremes that the poodle coat is taken to in the show ring, clipping the coat started as a response to the needs of the dog during hunting. When the poodle is completely stripped of his coat, what is left looks pretty much like other retrievers.

Unlike most other canines, the coat of the poodle is hair, and constantly growing. If the poodle coat is not clipped or brushed regularly the dog can face problems with skin irritation, matting, and mobility. The clips, most of them still sported today, originated in the field, in an effort to improve the dogs performance.

The clips all originate in a desire to balance the needs of the dog for warmth, health, protection, mobility and endurance.

How do you promote warmth? By leaving the hair intact, and allowing it to grow you create a wooly layer that traps air next to the skin, allowing it to provide insulation. If you allow the hair to mat or felt you can create a very warm coat that will allow the dog to endure extreme cold for short periods of time. This practice however, can come at a cost. If your dog is prone to skin problems do not try this. If your dog is fairly robust and seems to not suffer from skin irritations you can let him mat to a degree over the winter if he spends time outside in cold damp conditions... but remember, come spring you have to strip him.

How do you promote health? The skin of a poodle, like their hair, is not the same as other dogs. Poodles can sun burn, suffer from prickly heat, acne, and a host of other skin problems. Keeping them clean, while not stripping the skin of it's natural oils, is fundamental to promoting their good health. Also important is providing enough coat so that the dog is protected from most irritants and the sun, while providing cooling or warmth. A light coat on the back in summer with a shaved undercarriage provides a good balance of sun protection and cooling ability.

How do you provide protection? The hair not only serves as sun protection, but also as protection from other irritants. By allowing the hair to cover the flanks , neck and legs of the dog, you are providing a barrier against thorns, skin irritating plants, and sometimes other dogs.

How do you provide mobility? Strategically removing the hair can promote a easier gait both in and out of the water. On land, matts in the arm pits or under the legs can cause hitching or a lurch in the stride. Keeping these areas matte free, by clipping or brushing, will help your dog move more comfortably and freely. In the water, hair equals weight. All that hair that traps air for warmth, can just as easily trap water and increase drag. By removing hair from areas that are not vital for warmth, you can increase the ability of the dog to swim freely.

How do you provide endurance? As stated above, in the water, hair equals weight. All that hair that traps air for warmth, can just as easily trap water and increase drag. By removing hair and decreasing the drag, and therefore the energy that the dog needs to expend, you help your dog last longer in the field.

How all this was balanced by pre-1600 hunters and fowlers.
There was no single approach, just as today. Gervese Markham author of Hungers Prevention offers several options an his opinion on each.

A partial clip - leaving the fore long and the hind bare.
"Now for the cutting or shaving him from the navel downward--or backward--it is two ways well to be allowed of: that is, for summer hunting, or for water. Because these water dogs naturally are ever most laden with hair on the hinder parts; nature as it were labouring to defend that part most, which is continually to be employed in the most extremity, and because the hinder parts are ever deeper in the water than the foreparts, therefore nature hath given them the greater armour of hair to defend the wet and coldness; yet this defence in the summer time by the violence of the head of the sun, and the greatness of the dog's labour is very noisome and troublesome, and not only maketh him sooner to faint [lose heart] and give over [abandon] his sport but also makes him by his overheating, more subject to take the mange. And so likewise in matter of water, it is a very heavy burden to the dog, and makes him swim less nimbly and slower, besides the former offences before recited."

On stripping the dog
But for the cutting or shaving of a dog all quite over, even from the foot to the nostril, that I utterly dislike, for it not only takes from him the general benefits which nature hath lent him, but also brings such a tenderness and chillness over all his body, that the water in the end will grow irksome unto him; for...[although] men may argue that keeping any creature cold will make it the better endure cold, yet we find by true experience both in these and divers other such things, that when nature is thus continually kept at her uttermost ability of endurance, when any little drop more is added to that extremity, presently she faints and grows distempered, whereas, keep nature in her full strength and she will very hardly be conquered, and hence it doth come that you shall see an ordinary land Spaniel, being hastily and well kept, will tire twenty of these over-shaven curs in the cold water: whereas, let them have the rights nature hath bestowed upon them, and the water is as familiar unto them as the land any way can be.

On not clipping at all
Therefore, to conclude this point, I would have the skillful fowler, if he keep his water dog only for his use of fowling as to attend his nets, limerods, fowling-piece or such like, which is only for the most part appropriate to the winter season, then not to shave his dog at all, for he shall find in the sharp frost and snow, when the air shall freeze the drops of water faster on the hair than the dog can cast them off; that the uttermost benefit that nature hath granted, is no more but sufficient, and the carefull master should rather seek to increase them than diminish them.

The three images above demonstrate two versions of the first cut described by Markham, and the last cut described by Markham. The first two differ only in the length of the body hair. The first one with a white body is stripped, whereas the second version is left with a light covering of hair across the body to serve as sun protection. The last cut is the winter cut, where the dog is left long, except in areas that might cause binding or discomfort. The areas left bare, or very short, include the eyes, the arm pits, the belly before the groin, the annular ring and the tail.

What about those froofy bows?
One of the items most changed from their original purpose are the hunting ties that were used on the poodles in the field. Today they are represented by the small bows that are often attached to poodles ears. Originally, these ties were laces or cords, long and colorful woven or tied into the crown of a poodle. Their purpose was to help a huntsman identify one dog from another at a distance.

Other images of pre-1600 poodles can be found in the images area.