Picardy Spaniel (Epagneul Picard): The India Guide

What a Picardy Spaniel is, according to its own breed standard

A Picardy Spaniel is a medium-sized French pointing dog of Continental spaniel type, 57 to 62 cm at the withers for males and 55 to 60 cm for females, with a grey-mottled coat carrying dark brown patches and tan markings on head and limbs. The FCI holds it as Standard No. 108 and accepted it on a definitive basis on 8 December 1954.

The standard is short, specific and worth reading before any breed page. FCI Standard 108's general appearance is a dog of medium size and a Continental spaniel-type, well boned with strong limbs; gentle expression; head carriage gay and striking. Its important-proportions clause is a number rather than an adjective: the length from the point of the shoulder to the ischium exceeds the height at the withers by roughly one tenth.

The one clause that decides the Indian question

Under Coat, the standard says the hair is often with undercoat. That is four words and it does more work on this page than anything else in the document, because an undercoat is insulation and India is hot. The authoritative French text agrees: *souvent accompagné d'un sous poil*.

It also separates this breed from its closest relative. The Blue Picardy Spaniel's standard mentions no undercoat anywhere, so on the registry's own wording the Picardy Spaniel carries a little more coat than the Blue. That is a small difference and it points in the wrong direction for an Indian buyer.

Colour is the breed's identity, and the standard is blunt about it

The FCI's historical summary contains a sentence that settles the question every reader arrives with. In the authoritative French: Des deux chiens de PICARDIE, ce qui différencie le Picard, du Bleu de Picardie, c'est avant tout la couleur de la robe. Of the two Picardy dogs, what distinguishes the Picard from the Blue de Picardie is above all the colour of the coat.

The colour itself is described in traditional language: grey mottling with dark brown patches on different parts of the body and at the root of the tail, most often marked with tan on the head and limbs, producing the effect the old nomenclature called autumn leaves. A white or black patch is a disqualifying fault, and a nose that is not brown is a severe one.

Three registries, three standards, and where they disagree

Three bodies publish a standard for this breed and they do not agree. The FCI gives males 57 to 62 cm and says the coat is often with undercoat; the United Kennel Club gives a single 21.5 to 23.5 inch range and omits the undercoat entirely; Google's own knowledge panel prints a male floor two centimetres below the FCI's.

This is the kind of thing that gets flattened everywhere else and it matters, because the differences are exactly the clauses an Indian buyer needs.

What each disagreement actually costs a reader

• The undercoat. A reader who finds the UKC standard first will conclude this is a single-coated dog and will underestimate its Indian heat load. The FCI text, in both the English and the authoritative French, says otherwise United Kennel Club.
• The height. A 60 cm male is comfortably inside the FCI's range and above the UKC's stated 23.5 inch ceiling, sitting only inside its male tolerance. A judge in one system and a judge in the other are not measuring the same dog.
• The colour. Grey mottling and brown roan are different descriptions of the same coat, and a reader trying to identify a puppy from a photograph is being given two different targets.
• The ear set. Eye level against rather low is a real anatomical difference, and it is the feature this page later argues carries the breed's biggest Indian risk.

Note which document governs. The FCI record names French as the official authentic language for Standard 108, so where the English translation and the French original differ, the French wins. On the two clauses that matter here they do not differ: the size clause and the undercoat clause are identical in both, which is a negative result worth recording because it is not always true of FCI standards.

The date format, proved rather than assumed

The FCI's nomenclature record prints acceptance as 12/8/1954 and the current standard's publication as 6/8/2023. Those are ambiguous on their face. The same record also prints 8/24/2023, and 24 cannot be a month, which proves the first field is the month for this table. So the dates are 8 December 1954 and 8 June 2023, and the second reconciles exactly with the 08.06.2023 printed on the standard PDF in day-month-year form.

History, and three different years for the same club merger

The Picardy Spaniel is the older of the two Picardy breeds, separated from the French Spaniel as regional varieties divided in the early twentieth century. Its parent club was founded at Amiens in 1921 by the breeder Léon Flandre, and three sources give three different years for when that club absorbed the Blue Picardy club.

The club's own account is the one to start with, because it is the club that did the merging. CEPPA states that the Club des Épagneuls de Picardie was founded at Amiens in 1921 by the breeder Léon Flandre, that it merged with the Club de l'Épagneul Bleu de Picardie in 1937, that it annexed the Club de l'Épagneul de Pont-Audemer in 1980, and that it has been officially named the Club des Épagneuls de Picardie et Pont-Audemer since 2015. The Société Centrale Canine's own directory confirms that one affiliated club holds all three breeds.

All three agree on 1921 and on 1980. They disagree in the middle. The United Kennel Club's history says that in 1921 the Picard Spaniel and Blue Picardy Spaniel Club was formed, which if read literally would mean the two breeds shared a club from the start. NAPSA says the amalgamation happened in 1938. The French club says 1937.

Bonbeno does not resolve this. The French club is the body that holds the records and its own page is the strongest of the three, so 1937 is the figure this page leads with, but a one-year gap between a national parent club and a national alliance is exactly the sort of detail that gets copied silently everywhere else.

The separation from the French Spaniel

NAPSA dates the breed's recognition as distinct to 1907, as the French Spaniel began to subdivide into separate regional varieties, and says the standard was drawn up in 1908 and has remained largely unchanged since. The FCI's own historical summary does not give dates; it says instead that the diverse biotope of the Picardy region led local hunters to look for a sturdy, versatile and generous dog, and that this ancient breed has mainly been used locally, which explains why it has never quite expanded outside of Picardy.

The United Kennel Club adds an ancestry claim the FCI does not make: that the Picardy Spaniel descends from old French spaniels crossed with English Setters and Gordon Setters. The FCI standard's history section says nothing about setters at all. Treat the setter cross as the UKC's account rather than as a settled fact.

Two wars, and a region that was the front line

The First World War made Picardy ground zero for some of the conflict's most intense fighting, and the Second was worse for the breed still: NAPSA records that when it was over, the Picardy Spaniel had almost disappeared. That is a familiar shape for a European regional gundog and it is why the modern population is small.

It is also why the 2025 studbook figure in the next section is worth reading twice. A breed that almost disappeared in 1945 registered 168 puppies in France last year and was the only one of its club's three breeds to grow.

How rare the Picardy Spaniel is, in real French studbook numbers

The French studbook registered 168 Picardy Spaniels in 2025, up from 145 in 2024, a rise of 16 percent. That makes it the only one of the three breeds its parent club holds whose numbers went up, against a Blue Picardy Spaniel down 41 percent to 84 and a Pont-Audemer Spaniel down to eight.

Rarity is asserted on every page about this breed and counted on none of them. The number exists, in the Société Centrale Canine's Statistiques LOF 2025, a PDF whose Groupe VII table carries every French pointing breed with its 2024 and 2025 registrations, its confirmations and its year-on-year change.

What those numbers mean in proportion

One hundred and sixty-eight registrations is 0.94 percent of the French pointing-dog group. Set beside the Epagneul Breton at 3,793, the Picardy Spaniel is outnumbered roughly 23 to one by the Brittany in its own country and in its own FCI section.

It is nonetheless the healthy one of the three breeds its club holds. In a single year the Blue Picardy Spaniel lost 41 percent of its registrations while the Picardy gained 16 percent, and the Pont-Audemer Spaniel fell from 19 births to 8. One club, three breeds, three completely different trajectories.

The confirmation column, which nobody quotes

The SCC table's Conf column counts dogs that passed confirmation, the French adult examination against the breed standard that a dog must pass to be fully entered in the studbook. The Picardy Spaniel recorded 41 confirmations in 2025 against 168 registrations, which the table prints as 24 percent.

Read that carefully rather than as a failure rate. Confirmation happens at about a year old, so a given year's confirmations largely describe the previous year's puppies, and many pet-homed dogs are never presented. What it does show is the size of the actively bred, standard-assessed population, and 41 dogs is small.

The Pont-Audemer row makes the lag visible: 9 confirmations against 8 registrations, more dogs confirmed in the year than were born in it.

How this compares with the British rare spaniels

For scale against the other breeds in this batch: the Kennel Club registered 15 Sussex Spaniels and 213 Welsh Springer Spaniels in Britain in 2025. The Picardy Spaniel's 168 French registrations put it in the same band as the Welsh Springer, and roughly eleven times the Sussex.

Picardy Spaniel price in india, and the four Indian sites that do not carry it

No Picardy Spaniel price in India exists, and the absence is unusually clean. Four Indian listing routes that do serve other spaniels return a 404 or a Dog Breed Not Found title for this one, and not a single Indian domain appears in the top ten of the India-restricted price search.

Most rare-breed price sections have to unpick a fabricated rupee figure. This one does not, because nobody in India has bothered to fabricate one. Petbuy.in returns a clean HTTP 404 for the breed, and Mr n Mrs Pet answers HTTP 200 before landing on a page whose own title reads 404 Page Not Found, which is why a status check alone is not evidence that a listing exists.

Not one Indian domain in the top ten

The India-restricted search for this breed's price returns no Indian pages at all. The first ten results are a United States marketplace, a United States breed-list site whose page is for the Blue Picardy rather than the Picardy, a Pinterest board, Good Dog, a Facebook group, Wikipedia, Wamiz in Britain, the United Kennel Club and Basepaws. That is what a genuinely absent market looks like from a search engine's point of view.

The highest-placed Indian domain for the breed on the informational query is GoofyTails, a Delhi pet-products retailer running the breed page as content marketing, and it quotes no puppy price at all. Royal Canin's India-localised page does the same. Both are the correct behaviour and both are the tell: Indian businesses that actually sell to Indian dog owners have nothing to sell here.

The soft 404 worth naming

Poodles.in answers HTTP 200 for this breed with the title Dog Breed Not Found, 32,904 bytes of page, and the breed name nowhere in the body. A tool that checks status codes records that as a live page. It is the same site that publishes a full monthly cost table for the Sussex Spaniel and the Welsh Springer Spaniel, so the absence here is a genuine gap in its data rather than a site-wide failure.

The only real published prices are foreign, and they disagree

The Good Dog figure was read out of the raw page source as a `buyersGuidePriceRange` object with `low_price` 3,000 and `high_price` 3,500, rather than from a search snippet. That matters because the same marketplace's Welsh Springer Spaniel entry prints a range whose two endpoints are both USD 2,500, which is what a template does with a single data point.

The conversion above is arithmetic performed here and labelled as such. It is not an Indian price and nobody in India is offering it. Any rupee figure that appears for this breed in future should be divided by 84.38 first, because a clean quotient would mean somebody converted a dollar band rather than observing an Indian market.

Monthly cost of ownership in India, built from figures you can check

No Indian site publishes a monthly cost for this breed, which is unusual and useful: the template site that costs other spaniels serves a Dog Breed Not Found page for this one. What is real is the component cost of keeping a 20 to 25 kg working gundog in an Indian city, and each line below was read live on 8 September 2026.

On the Sussex Spaniel and the Welsh Springer Spaniel, the Indian monthly figure that ranks is a preset row shared with unrelated breeds. Here there is no row at all. That removes the usual trap and leaves the honest question: what does a dog of this size actually cost to keep in India?

Two caveats belong with that table. Vetic quotes different course prices on different city pages on the same day, so these are its national figures and a Mumbai reader should expect more. And Supertails' own unit label on the NexGard listing reads Rs 3,308 per 100 g for a pack of three tablets, which is a broken template field rather than a price.

What this breed adds on top

• Ear care as a standing line. The standard requires an ear leather that reaches the tip of the muzzle, which is the conformation associated with otitis externa across spaniels. Budget a veterinary ear consultation rather than a shop product the first time an ear smells.
• Air conditioning treated as a running cost, because the standard says the coat is often with undercoat and India is 18 degrees warmer on the annual mean than the breed's homeland NASA POWER climatology endpoint queried….
• Daycare or a walker. A pointing dog the FCI files as subject to a working trial does not sit at home for ten hours, and PawSpace's Bengaluru daycare line is Rs 799 for up to ten hours.
• Screening you will have to arrange yourself. There is no breed screening scheme for this dog anywhere, no OFA statistics row and no published prevalence data, so hips, elbows and eyes are a conversation with your own vet rather than a certificate you can ask a breeder for.

Heat tolerance in India, argued from the coat clause the registries disagree about

A Picardy Spaniel can live in India and cannot be worked here in summer. Amiens returns an annual mean of 10.09 C and a hottest month of 17.66 C against Chennai's 27.95 C, and the FCI standard says the coat is often with undercoat while the United Kennel Club's version of the same clause does not mention an undercoat at all.

Start with the clause, because this is the one place where which registry you read changes the practical answer. FCI Standard 108: Hair: dense and not too silky; fine on head, slightly wavy on the body. Often with undercoat. The authoritative French agrees. The United Kennel Club's coat clause reads dense and not too silky, fine on the head, and slightly wavy on the body, and stops.

Bonbeno follows the FCI text, because the FCI holds the breed on a definitive basis, the standard is the current 2023 revision, and the French original carries the same sentence. Assume an undercoat and plan for it.

The homeland, by explicit latitude and longitude

Amiens, the city where the breed club was founded, queried at 49.8941 N, 2.2957 E for the 2001 to 2020 climatology, returns a grid cell at 107.60 m against a real elevation near 34 m, an error of about 74 m. That overstates the altitude and therefore very slightly understates the temperature, and it is small enough to use on flat ground. Abbeville, where the club is registered, returns a separate cell at 102.45 m and an annual mean 0.13 C warmer, so the two Picardy points agree.

The humidity argument is backwards, and the numbers say so

Picardy is more humid than any Indian city on this page. Amiens runs 85.54 percent annual relative humidity; Chennai runs 72.39, Kolkata 73.93, Mumbai 67.39 and Delhi 45.56. A page warning that Indian humidity will finish a northern French gundog has the reasoning inverted. Northern France is genuinely damp.

What this dog has never met is heat. Amiens's hottest month averages 17.66 C and its coldest 2.89 C, so Chennai's coolest month is 6.4 degrees warmer than Picardy's hottest. Peak wet bulb runs 15.23 C at home against 27.09 C in Kolkata, a gap of nearly 12 degrees.

What the heat-illness evidence supports, and what it does not

Of the 1,259 heat-related illness events recorded across 905,543 UK dogs in 2016, 879 had a recorded trigger, and 652 of those 879, or 74.2 percent, were exertional rather than a hot car or a hot day alone. Environmental heat accounted for 113 and vehicular confinement for 46. The companion paper puts case fatality at 14.18 percent and gives an odds ratio of 1.42 for dogs at or above their breed and sex mean bodyweight.

Neither paper models the Picardy Spaniel, and it is nowhere near the over-50 kg band that carries an odds ratio of 3.42. What transfers honestly is the bodyweight factor and the exertional finding. Since the FCI classifies this breed as subject to a working trial, the exertional category is the one that applies.

The practical schedule

• Bengaluru and Pune are the two workable cities, at peak wet bulbs of 21.86 and 22.97 C and hottest months in April rather than May.
• Mumbai and Chennai need air conditioning and a hard rule, because the coastal night never gets cool enough for a working dog to recover in.
• Delhi is the hardest, at 35.88 C in June and a July wet bulb of 26.50 C once the monsoon lands on top of the heat.
• Kolkata carries the heaviest wet-bulb load measured here at 27.09 C in June. Treat summer exertion as a veterinary risk rather than a fitness question.

The ear leather in Indian humidity, and what the standard specifies

Ear infections are the most likely thing to go wrong with a Picardy Spaniel in India, and the reason is written into the standard as a measurement. The ear must be long enough that when gently extended forward, the leather reaches the tip of the muzzle, and it is rather thick and covered in wavy silky hair.

The FCI's ear clause is unusually testable: should be set approximately at eye level. Rather thick, framing the skull and covered with beautiful wavy, silky hair. When gently extended forward, the leather must reach the tip of the muzzle. An ear too short or triangular is a severe fault. Every element of that description reduces airflow over the canal.

The United Kennel Club describes the same ear as set on rather low rather than at eye level, and does not give the muzzle-tip test. Either way it is a long, thick, hairy leather lying against the head.

There is no Picardy Spaniel otitis figure, and inventing one would be easy

No published prevalence data exists for this breed. PubMed returns zero records across three name forms, against controls returning 1,109 and 369 in the same session. So the honest thing this section can do is give you the closest measured evidence and label it clearly as being about other dogs.

Kaimio and colleagues reviewed the 2010 medical records of 55 private veterinary clinics in Finland, covering 98,736 dogs, comparing otitis externa across four spaniels.

Every percentage reproduces from its own counts. The Picardy Spaniel is not in that study and none of those four numbers is its number. They are quoted because a range of 15.7 to 31.8 percent across four spaniels in a cool, dry, well-served European country is the right order of magnitude to plan against, and because India will not improve on those conditions.

The study's most transferable finding is about timing rather than breed: among the American Cockers surveyed, 46 percent of 72 showed their first signs before one year of age, and early onset raised the odds of end-stage disease by 3.8 times.

What to actually do, in an Indian monsoon

1. Dry the ears actively after every bath, swim and wet walk. Overseas gundog guidance saying to towel a dog and let it air dry is written for a cool dry climate and does not transfer to a Mumbai August.
2. Clean weekly with a veterinary ear cleaner, before there is a smell rather than after.
3. Lift and check both leathers daily from June to September. A thick leather framing the skull hides an early infection completely.
4. Treat a first-year ear infection as urgent, because the Finnish data ties early onset to end-stage disease.
5. Check the ear leather and between the toes for ticks at every brush, given Indian tick-borne disease pressure.

Health issues, and the honest answer about how little is known

Nothing has been published about this breed's health. PubMed returns zero records on three name forms, the breed holds an OFA code but has no published statistics row, and the largest UK longevity study considered it and excluded it. Saying so is more useful than any figure a page could offer instead.

Three independent instruments were run and all three came back empty, each with a control that passed in the same session. That is what makes the absence a finding rather than a gap in the research.

Read the McMillan exclusion carefully, because it is not an oversight

The Picardy Spaniel appears in the study's breed list and is flagged N, with phylogeny reclassification NA, FCI group Pointing Dogs, body size Medium, cephalic index Mesocephalic. That table holds 344 breeds, of which 155 are flagged Y for inclusion and 189 N. So the researchers considered the breed and had too few UK dogs to analyse, rather than never having heard of it.

The practical consequence is precise: no breed-specific median survival exists for the Picardy Spaniel anywhere, and any lifespan figure you meet is an estimate carried over from a related breed or invented. The companion UK life-table work covers the national dog population rather than any single breed and cannot fill the gap either.

What the standard itself tells you about risk

In the absence of prevalence data, the breed standard is the honest evidence, because it describes the conformation.

• A long, thick, hairy ear leather reaching the tip of the muzzle, which is the conformation associated with otitis externa across every spaniel that has been studied.
• A coat often carrying an undercoat, which is an Indian heat liability rather than a disease.
• A medium-sized, well boned working dog with no exaggeration anywhere in the standard. There is no brachycephaly, no skin folds, no dwarfism, no mandated malocclusion and no extreme angulation. That is a genuinely good structural report and it deserves saying.
• Feathering between tightly closed toes, which in Indian conditions means interdigital checking after every walk.

What Indian law requires anyway

Whatever the breed literature says, Indian breeding law sets its own list. Second Schedule Part III paragraph 8(10) of the Dog Breeding and Marketing Rules 2017 states that dogs shall have been tested for genetic defects, including hip dysplasia, progressive retinal atrophy, night blindness, hypothyroidism, entropion, ectropion, overshot, undershot jaw, wry mouth, two or more missing teeth and cryptorchidism. The word including makes that list illustrative rather than closed.

Two of those items intersect with the FCI standard's own disqualifying faults: an overshot or undershot bite disqualifies under Standard 108, and so does the loss of one canine, two incisors or more than two other teeth. A breeder meeting the Indian requirement is also meeting part of the FCI's.

Temperament and household fit, and who should not buy one

The Picardy Spaniel is gentle, even-tempered and unusually good with children, and every source says so including the breed standard itself. FCI Standard 108 calls it flexible and gentle with an even temperament, well adapted to family life, and its historical summary describes a real kid lover.

It is rare for a breed standard to make a claim about children, and this one does. FCI 108's brief historical summary ends: His kindness also makes him an ideal companion at home. A real kid lover, he will happily join in their games without ever outplaying them. The behaviour clause is separate and reads flexible and gentle dog, with an even temperament, well adapted to family life.

The other registries agree without hedging. The United Kennel Club: gentle, intelligent and willing to please, very adaptable and possessing a strong natural hunting instinct. English Wikipedia describes a docile breed fond of playing with children. The North American alliance calls it an excellent breed for beginners.

The one thing the standard understates

FCI 108's temperament clause says the Picardy Spaniel enjoys a daily walk in order to work off his energy. That is a remarkably modest sentence for a breed the same organisation simultaneously classifies as subject to a working trial, and for a dog its own North American alliance describes as having a high degree of prey drive.

Take the working-trial classification as the honest signal. A daily walk is what the dog will accept without complaint; it is not what the dog was built for, and in India the difference shows up as a bored, vocal, heavy dog by year two.

Who this breed genuinely suits in India

• A ground-floor or independent house with outdoor space, and an owner who will use it twice a day.
• Families with children, on the standard's own claim and on every other source's agreement.
• A first-time owner who is honest about exercise. The alliance calls it an excellent breed for beginners because a cooperative temperament makes it easy to train, and that is a genuine recommendation with one condition attached.
• A household that is home. This is a companion gundog, not a kennel dog.

• Not for a high-floor flat with a ten-hour empty day.
• Not for a home with pet birds or small caged animals, given the documented prey drive.
• Not for anyone who cannot commit to a dawn-and-dusk schedule for eight months of an Indian year.
• Not for anyone buying on looks. At 168 puppies a year in the world's main population, the dog you are shown in India is far more likely to be something else.

Training approach, and what this breed resists

Train a Picardy Spaniel with cooperation rather than pressure, and start recall before the prey drive switches on. Its own North American alliance calls it an excellent breed for beginners, on the reasoning that a high degree of prey drive combined with a naturally cooperative temperament makes it easy to train.

The claim is specific enough to act on. NAPSA's wording is that a high degree of prey drive and a naturally cooperative temperament combine to make them easy dogs to train. That is a description of a dog that wants to work with you and already wants to chase, which is the ideal raw material for a gundog and a manageable problem for a pet home.

The United Kennel Club's characteristics clause says the same thing in registry language: gentle, intelligent and willing to please, very adaptable, possessing a strong natural hunting instinct.

Three priorities, in order

1. Recall on a long line, before six months. The prey drive is documented and the breed is a pointing dog. Build the behaviour while the chase is still weaker than the food.
2. Socialise the puppy to Indian street life early. Traffic, delivery riders, building staff, cattle, other dogs. A gentle, adaptable dog is easy to socialise and still has to be socialised.
3. Settle and alone-time training from week eight, because this is a companion gundog that bonds hard.

The Indian schedule problem

Most Indian training classes and most owner free time fall between 10 am and 6 pm. For eight months of the year that window is the wrong one for a working gundog, because exertion accounted for 652 of the 879 UK heat-illness events with a recorded trigger. Do the physical work at dawn and after dark, and use the middle of the day for scent games and food puzzles on a cool floor.

That split suits this breed particularly well. The FCI standard credits it with a keen sense of smell that leaves no chance to his prey, so nose work is not a consolation prize here; it is the thing the dog is best at, and it can be done indoors in a Chennai May.

What to avoid

• Heavy-handed correction. Every source describes a gentle, cooperative dog. Nothing in the literature suggests it needs pressure, and pressure is what breaks a soft gundog.
• Off-lead freedom before recall is proofed, on a breed with a documented prey drive.
• Training in the heat. See above.
• Believing the daily-walk sentence. The FCI files this breed as subject to a working trial. Its exercise clause is the understatement, not the classification.

Daily exercise requirement, and what happens without it

Plan for a working gundog rather than for the daily walk its standard mentions. The FCI classifies the Picardy Spaniel as subject to a working trial, describes it as athletic with a legendary ability at work, and its North American alliance records a high degree of prey drive.

The standard contains both halves of the answer and they point in different directions. Its behaviour clause says an athletic dog, the Picardy Spaniel enjoys a daily walk in order to work off his energy. Its historical summary says his ability at work is legendary, both firm and cheerful while pointing, with a keen sense of smell. And the FCI's nomenclature record files the breed as subject to a working trial.

Take the classification. A working trial is a field test, not a walk, and a breed the FCI expects to pass one is not satisfied by twenty minutes on a lead.

What the exercise should be

• Long steady off-lead work in a secure space, which is what a pointing dog's build and gait clause describe: easy, supple, even and strong, yet elegant.
• Nose and tracking games, which use the faculty the standard singles out and which work indoors in the heat.
• Swimming where the water is clean and safe, because it is the only high-intensity option that does not raise core temperature. Dry the ears afterwards without exception.
• Two sessions rather than one, split across dawn and after dark for most of the Indian year.

The Indian timetable, written out

Wet bulb is the monsoon number to watch, not the thermometer. Kolkata peaks at 27.09 C wet bulb in June and Delhi at 26.50 C in July, against 15.23 C in Picardy. A 30 C afternoon in a Kolkata July is a harder workload for a coated dog than a 35 C afternoon in a dry Delhi May.

What happens without it

An under-exercised Picardy Spaniel gets heavy and gets loud. Weight is the one heat-illness risk factor from the UK data that transfers cleanly to this breed: dogs at or above their breed and sex mean bodyweight carried an odds ratio of 1.42. Since no breed-specific mean weight exists (the FCI standard gives no weight at all), the practical test is body condition by hand rather than a number on a scale.

Grooming and coat care in Indian humidity

Brush a Picardy Spaniel two or three times a week to the skin in the monsoon and weekly the rest of the year, keep the interdigital hair trimmed, and dry the ears and feathering actively. There is no clipping pattern, so the Indian job is moisture management rather than styling.

The standard tells you exactly what you are working with: dense and not too silky; fine on head, slightly wavy on the body. Often with undercoat. It also specifies where the feathering sits: wavy medium-long feathers on the rear of the forearm above the elbow and distinctly longer feathers down to the metacarpus, profuse fringes on the lower thigh, hindlegs feathered to the hock, and hair between tightly closed toes.

That last clause is the one Indian owners underestimate. Feathering between the toes holds water and grit, and on Indian streets it also holds ticks.

An Indian routine that reflects the monsoon

1. Brush to the skin two or three times a week from June to September, weekly otherwise. A coat that often carries an undercoat and stays damp under a wavy topcoat is where hot spots begin.
2. Dry the ears, the forearm feathering and the lower-thigh fringes actively after every wash and every wet walk. Not towel-and-air-dry.
3. Trim the hair on the underside of the feet and check between the toes after every walk.
4. Do not shave the coat for summer. There is no evidence that clipping a working gundog's coat helps in heat, and a coat with an undercoat regrows unevenly. Manage heat with the clock and with air conditioning.
5. Bathe roughly monthly, or sooner after a muddy monsoon walk, plugging the ears first.

What professional grooming costs in India

Read live on 8 September 2026 from Vetic's Delhi page: Pet Bathing, 60 minutes, from Rs 934 against a list price of Rs 1,099, and Complete Bath and Hair Styling, 120 minutes, from Rs 1,869 against Rs 2,199. The 120-minute Haircut for Pets tier at Rs 1,359 is not something this breed needs.

A monthly bath and blow-dry plus home brushing is the honest requirement, which puts grooming near the bottom of this breed's Indian cost stack.

Feeding, body condition and what is actually available in India

Feed a Picardy Spaniel to a lean body condition on a complete diet appropriate to its life stage, and judge the amount by hand rather than by a chart. The FCI standard gives no weight for this breed at all, so there is no published target to feed towards.

The absence of a weight figure is the starting point. FCI Standard 108 specifies heights and no weight, and the United Kennel Club's standard does the same. Google's knowledge panel, which prints weights for most breeds, prints none for this one. So any feeding chart keyed to a breed weight is keyed to a number nobody published.

That makes body condition the only honest measure, which is true for every dog and unavoidable for this one.

What governs the amount

• Life stage. Puppy, adult or senior, on a complete diet.
• Actual workload. A dog getting real off-lead work eats meaningfully more than one getting two lead walks, and in an Indian summer the workload legitimately falls. Adjust the food when the exercise drops, not a month later.
• Body condition by hand. Run both hands flat down the ribcage; you should feel the ribs easily under a thin layer without pressing. On a dense-coated dog this beats looking.
• Weight relative to the dog's own history, since no breed mean exists. Weigh monthly and track the trend rather than comparing against a chart.

Why keeping it lean matters more than usual here

Two reasons, both evidenced. Bodyweight at or above the breed and sex mean carried an odds ratio of 1.42 for heat-related illness in the UK data, and this is a working gundog living in a country roughly 18 degrees warmer on the annual mean than its homeland. And because no screening data exists for this breed's joints, there is no reassurance available that its hips can carry extra weight.

Ears and the food bowl

A small point that saves real money. The standard requires an ear leather long enough to reach the tip of the muzzle, which is long enough to trail in a bowl twice a day. A narrow or raised bowl, or a snood at feeding time, removes one controllable input to this breed's highest-risk problem.

What an Indian owner can actually buy

This is a medium breed at roughly 20 to 25 kg by build, served by the ordinary medium-adult and medium-puppy lines every Indian retailer stocks. Bonbeno publishes no monthly kibble figure, because Indian retail prices move fast enough that a figure quoted today misleads within weeks, and because for once no Indian site publishes one to check it against.

Life expectancy, and why this page publishes no figure

Bonbeno publishes no life expectancy for the Picardy Spaniel, because none has been measured. The largest UK longevity study lists the breed and flags it for exclusion from its survival analysis, PubMed carries zero records on it, and no national registry publishes mortality data for the breed.

This is a short section on purpose. The honest answer to how long this dog lives is that nobody knows, and the useful part is showing exactly how that was established rather than asserting it.

McMillan and colleagues' 2024 study is the strongest longevity instrument available for dogs, covering 155 purebred breeds in the United Kingdom. Its Supplementary Table S5 lists 344 breeds and flags each one Y or N for inclusion in the survival analysis: 155 Y and 189 N. The Picardy Spaniel is present, flagged N, with reclassification NA, FCI group Pointing Dogs, body size Medium, cephalic index Mesocephalic.

That is a considered exclusion rather than an oversight, and it means something precise: there were too few Picardy Spaniels in UK primary veterinary care to compute a median. No figure exists to quote, and the sibling breeds' figures are not substitutes.

What the other instruments say

• PubMed: zero records across Picardy Spaniel[tiab], Epagneul Picard[tiab] and Epagneul picard[All Fields], with controls returning 1,109 and 369 in the same session.
• OFA: no published statistics row, though the breed holds code PIC. OFA publishes a breed only at 100 hip evaluations, or 50 for its other databases Orthopedic Foundation for Animals.
• The French studbook publishes births and confirmations, not deaths. It is a population record, not a mortality one.
• The UK life-table work covers the national dog population rather than any single breed, so it cannot supply a breed figure either.

Month by month through the first year in India

Indian law sets the earliest lawful sale at eight weeks and expects the vaccination course to complete around eighteen weeks. For this breed the two things to build early are recall, before the prey drive matures, and an ear-drying routine, before the first monsoon.

Two of those dates come from the gazette rather than from a breeder. Rule 8(1)(a) of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Dog Breeding and Marketing) Rules 2017 states that pups less than eight weeks in age are not sold, and Second Schedule Part III paragraph 8(9) states that all pups shall be vaccinated, which can start at seven to eight weeks and is usually completed at eighteen weeks.

The three habits to build in the first six months

1. Ear handling, daily. Lift both leathers, look, reward. A leather that reaches the tip of the muzzle hides an early infection completely, and early onset is tied to end-stage disease in the closest comparable data.
2. Dry after water, every time. Build it into bathing from week one so it is not a fight later.
3. Recall on a long line, before the chase matures. The breed's own alliance records a high degree of prey drive.

What to screen and when

There is no breed screening scheme for this dog anywhere, no OFA statistics row and no published prevalence data PubMed searches run 8 September 2026…. That does not mean skip screening; it means arrange it yourself. Hips, elbows and a full eye examination once the dog is skeletally mature are the sensible baseline for a medium working gundog, and Indian law's own genetic-defect list under Second Schedule Part III paragraph 8(10) is a reasonable starting checklist.

Head to head against the breeds an Indian buyer actually cross-shops

Nobody in India chooses between a Picardy Spaniel and another Picardy Spaniel. The realistic set is the two breeds its own club holds, the French Spaniel it separated from, and the English Cocker Spaniel that is actually available here. On population the Picardy is the healthiest of the French four; on availability all four lose.

Every registration figure below comes from one document, the Société Centrale Canine's Statistiques LOF 2025, so the columns are comparable rather than assembled from different sources.

What that table says

The Picardy Spaniel is the only French spaniel in that group whose registrations rose in 2025. Every other breed on the list fell, two of them steeply. For a breed that almost disappeared after the Second World War, a 16 percent rise from 145 to 168 is the most encouraging number on this page.

It is still outnumbered by the Brittany roughly 23 to one inside its own FCI section and its own country.

Picardy or Blue Picardy, which is the question Google actually asks

Google's own People Also Ask box for this breed asks how much a Blue Picardy Spaniel costs, which tells you how routinely the two are conflated. The FCI settles it in a sentence in the authoritative French text: what distinguishes the Picard from the Bleu de Picardie is above all the colour of the coat.

• Nose colour is the fastest test. Brown on the Picardy, and any other colour is a severe fault. Black on the Blue.
• Tan markings. The Picardy is most often marked with tan on head and limbs; the Blue is not.
• Base coat. Grey mottling with dark brown patches against silver-grey and black speckling.
• Population. 168 against 84 in 2025, so the Picardy is now twice as numerous as the Blue.

Against the spaniel an Indian buyer can actually get

The English Cocker Spaniel is smaller, available in India at a verifiable price, and carries a far larger evidence base: a measured otitis prevalence of 15.7 percent of 1,467 dogs in the Finnish survey and a real position in the UK longevity study, against a Picardy Spaniel that has no published health data of any kind.

Mistakes Indian buyers and owners actually make with this breed

Six mistakes account for most of what goes wrong, and the first three happen before the dog arrives. The commonest is buying the wrong Picardy: Google's own question box asks about the Blue rather than this breed.

Before you buy

1. Confusing the Picardy with the Blue Picardy. Check the nose. Brown is the Picardy, and any other nose colour is a severe fault in Standard 108; black is the Blue Fédération Cynologique Internationale.
2. Believing the dog on offer is a Picardy Spaniel at all. France registered 168 in 2025 and Indian law rejects any import application made for trading or breeding. Four Indian listing routes do not carry the breed at all Puppiezo, probed….
3. Reading the United Kennel Club standard and stopping there. It omits the undercoat clause that the FCI's authoritative French text contains, which is the clause that decides how the dog copes with an Indian summer.
4. Accepting a docked puppy, which is evidence of an offence under Second Schedule Part II paragraph 6(8).

After the dog arrives

1. Believing the daily-walk sentence in the standard. The same organisation classifies this breed as subject to a working trial, and its alliance records a high degree of prey drive. Plan for a gundog.
2. Letting the ears air dry. The standard specifies a leather that reaches the tip of the muzzle, rather thick and covered in wavy silky hair. In an Indian monsoon that does not dry on its own.
3. Exercising in the middle of an Indian day. Exertion accounted for 652 of the 879 UK heat-illness events with a recorded trigger.
4. Shaving the coat for summer. A coat that often carries an undercoat regrows unevenly, and heat is managed with the clock rather than with clippers.
5. Trusting a lifespan or health figure you find online. Nothing has been published about this breed's health at all, so any prevalence or longevity number you meet came from somewhere else.
6. Feeding to a chart. No registry publishes a weight for this breed, so body condition by hand is the only honest measure.

Adoption, import law and responsible sourcing

Adopting a Picardy Spaniel in India is not realistically possible, and importing one is lawful only as your own pet. The honest route for an Indian reader who wants this kind of dog is a spaniel or spaniel cross from an Indian shelter, and this section sets out both paths with the law that governs them.

What the law permits, precisely

Dogs enter India under ITC(HS) 01061900 as a Restricted import. Policy Condition 7 allows three purposes only: a pet dog with a valid pet book and records in the importer's own name, dogs imported by research organisations with a CPCSEA recommendation, and dogs for internal security by the Defence and Police Force. Policy Condition 8 states that import of commercial dogs for breeding or any other commercial activity other than those purposes is not permitted.

Paragraph 6 of the same trade notice states that any applications for trading or breeding purposes, or applications made on behalf of some other person or entity, shall be duly rejected, and paragraph 7 limits entry to the airports and seaports of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Kolkata, with quarantine at the government station where required. DAHD added a seventh port, Cochin International Airport at Kochi, for pets arriving under the baggage rules in October 2024. The full route is set out in how to import a dog to India.

Put that beside 168 French registrations in 2025 and four Indian listing routes that do not carry the breed Poodles.in, probed…. There is no lawful commercial supply chain into India for this dog and nothing to supply it with.

Where the breed is registered, and what that means for an Indian buyer

The Picardy Spaniel is held by the FCI on a definitive basis as Standard 108, and India is a full FCI member represented by the Kennel Club of India, so the KCI issues pedigrees against FCI nomenclature. That answers the India recognition question without needing a KCI breed list, which is useful because the KCI publishes no breed list at all and an absence from its site is a limit of the instrument rather than a statement about the breed.

The dog's actual paperwork will come from France. The Livre des Origines Français is the studbook, the Société Centrale Canine publishes it, and the Club des Épagneuls de Picardie et Pont-Audemer is the affiliated breed club for this breed and the two others it shares a club with Club des Épagneuls de Picardie et….

The adoption route that actually exists

• Indian shelters and spaniel-adjacent rescue. Cockers and Cocker crosses reach Indian shelters regularly, usually surrendered when the grooming and ear care turned out to be real work. A liver or roan Cocker cross gives an Indian household much of what draws people to this breed.
• Breed rescue abroad, understood honestly. The French club and the North American alliance both exist. Neither will place a dog into India, and an adoption is not a route around Policy Condition 8.
• Never a broker. Bonbeno does not recommend breeders and does not link puppy listings. A seller who can produce a Picardy Spaniel in India on demand is telling you something about the dog.

If you are genuinely importing your own dog

1. Start the import authorisation at least two months before travel, which is the trade notice's own advice.
2. Register the dog in your own name on the pet book, because an application made on behalf of somebody else is refused.
3. Plan around the seven permitted ports and the quarantine station attached to them.
4. Ask for the LOF pedigree and the confirmation result. Only 41 of the 168 dogs registered in 2025 were confirmed against the standard, so a confirmed dog is a meaningfully documented one.
5. Arrange your own screening. No breed scheme exists, so hips, elbows and eyes are a conversation with your vet.

Compare with similar breeds

Picardy Spaniel sits in 2 Bonbeno groups. Each one compares it directly against the breeds it is genuinely an alternative to, on the same figures.