A supposed dox on display at the Grosvenor Museum (Chester, UK). The caption for this picture on the museum’s website reads, “This tatty looking specimen is possibly the only known dog-fox hybrid in the world. It is said that a male fox mated with a female dog on a canal boat near Beeston. It sat for many years on the staircase at Eaton Hall, before it was auctioned and donated to the Museum.
The only account you will find of this particular dox was written by J. Wentworth Day for The Sunday Dispatch of 31st July, 1960.
"There is a rumour that they will pull down Eaton Hall, the Duke of Westminster's vast mansion in Cheshire. It looks exactly like St. Pancras Station. So no onw will mourn it.
"Which reminds me that a few years ago I spent a week there. Someone suggested to the late Duke that he pull the place down. "It would be a crime to pull it down," Bend Or* pondered. "As big a crime to pull it down as it was to put it up."
"Which brings me to the fox-dog. You have never seen one. Neither has one man in a million.; Yet I met one, probably the only one in England, on the staircase. It stood in the window, unmistakable, inexplicable, and inescapable. Before dinner, too.**
"What on earth is that creature?" I asked.
"Oh! that's our fox-dog," my host replied airily, as though he might indicate the family Jabberwock.
"Interesting, isn't he?"
"I straightened my tie, advanced cautiously. There it was, a quizzical little thing, full of apologetic perkiness. Just what you would expect of a fox who had taken the wrong turning. It was light in colour and as light on its feet as a leprechaun.
Above: The fox at the Grosvenor Museum parked next to the Dox
Above: the Dox on display (c)2025 LM/Extinct Fox and Wild Cat Museum
"Tattered about the ears, but no doubt it had wooed its way and won. The brush-tail -or is it tail-brush- had a downward dip as if to say that the final "Who Whoop"*** was long ago halloaed.
"In fine, a gallant little blow-by -a cavallerly nightmare. And obviously old. Dust and sun long ago faded any foxy-red there might have been. None the less, the taxidermist had caught and imprisoned the spirit of foxy fun and debonair doggishness.
Above and below a close up of the Dox's head (c)2025 LM/Extinct Fox and Wild Cat Museum
"Written records, alas! do not exist. Legend says that the poor little oddity was one day hunted by the Cheshire Hunt, gave them a rattling run and was killed. More authentically a friend at Eaton writes:
"'Apparently it was the result of a mongrel bitch, which lived on a barge in the Canal near Beeston, mating with a fox. The stuffed fox-dog now at Eaton was one of the litter and it was presented to the late Duke many, many years ago. I have not been able to ascertain whether it died a natural death or whether it was in fact killed by hounds.'
"There the matter rests -and will probably rest for ever. But I, at least, can tell my grandchildren that I have seen and stroked a fox-dog.
Above: the legs of the Dox (c)2025 LM/Extinct Fox and Wild Cat Museum
Below: a closer look (c)2025 LM/Extinct Fox and Wild Cat Museum
"The records of crosses between dogs and foxes are few.
"The original types of domestic dog may have started from a pre-historic wolf, fox, or jackal, now extinct. In that case we may assume that the wolf-like dogs Samoyeds, Alsatians, and the rest, began as wolves; the Pomeranian and other sharp- nosed dogs as foxes; and the Saluki and Greyhounds as jackals.
"Whatever the answer, the fact remains that whereas a wolf occasionally crosses with a dog, fox-dog crosses are infinitely scarcer.
"Numerous examples exist of wolf-dog crosses. Buffon interbred between a wolf and a sheep-dog and kept a very careful record.
"He quotes also a cross carried out in 1773 by the Marquis de Spontin between a tame young she-wolf and a young dog.l
"Their descendants proved, as similar experiments have done, that after a few generations the wolf-cross entirely disappears. The great-great-great-great-grandchildren of the original cross are almost invariably indistinguishable from an ordinary domestic dog."
When you look at the Dox held by the Grosvenor Museum the first thing that strikes you is that is does not have any diagnostic feature of a fox. There are slight things where you can see why somebody took the word of the donator that this was a dog-fox cross but it is not. As for the suggestion that dust and sunlight had bleached the red pigment from the coat that is just silliness. I have seen foxes kept in sunlight while on display for years and the red never goes.
For The Red Paper (2010) and the updated Red Paper 2022 I looked at the claims of dog and fox interbreeding. Some cases seemed quite conclusive but then fell apart as they were looked into. genetically, science tells us, a fox and a domestic dog cannot breed and have hybrid offspring. After 40 plus years of following up on such claims I have seen photographs, old film clips and video footage of claimed Doxes and the main evidence is that the dog in question "has the ears of a fox" or "It has a coat similar to a fox" and even "It is not as bushy but the tail is similar to that of a fox".
What was not around when this Grosvenor Museum fox was alive (it looks like mid 19th century taxidermy) and given as a curio gift was DNA testing. It wasn't even around when Wentworth wrote his rather ill informed little piece. The Museum makes it clear that the Dox has not been DNA tested and why should they fork out the money for that when a test returning the result "Domestic dog" immediately kills the attractions value?
I doubt very much that this dog was hunted. Far more likely it died naturally as a talking point curio for the Dukes at hunt balls and dinner parties. After all the animal was so rare -and they had something that was one-upmanship that could not be beat.
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*Grosvenor was known within family circles as "Bendor", which was also the name of the racehorse Bend Or, owned by his grandfather. Bend Or won The Derby in 1880.
** in other words he never saw it after more than a few glasses of wine or whisky.***"Who Whoop" is the same as "halloaed" and is the call made when a fox is spotted by the hunt
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