I found this photo of an early “cream” golden. I don’t know the dog’s name or where it comes from, but I’m assuming that it’s British and dates to sometime in the 1950′s or 1960s, just 20 or 30 years after the very dark colored and lightly built dogs dominated the breed. It’s not that cobby or blocky, as you would find today in European lines of golden. Think of this dog as a transition from that type to the very cobby creams that exist today in Britain.
Compare this dog with Culham Brass (b. 1904)
And compare with what’s in vogue in the European show golden set:
It’s almost like a different breed, isn’t it? It reminds me of another breed, not a retriever but a livestock guardian breed.
The Kuvasz:
I think someone could make a lot of money selling Kuvaszok as “white golden retrievers.” They have about as much retrieving instinct and working ability as a retriever as most European show goldens!
Thanks for a blog that really interests!
The picture of the cream-colored Golden is of the very famous sire and show-winner GBCH Boltby Skylon born 1951, typical for the northern England at the time.
GBCH Torrdale Kim of Stenbury( http://www.k9data.com/pedigree.asp?ID=2249 ), born in 1945 is even earlier and also of the heavier, lighter type. On could think that Kim must have been the very first cream golden, but this is not true at all. His great grand sire “Gilder” born 1929 was also cream colored. Although popular among breeders, the time and judges was not ready for this shade of yellow. Cream was first allowed during the 30′s.
As you self pointed out in another post, Lord Harcourt did bread other dark retrievers with his Goldens. One should keep in mind that these actions most certainly must have driven the breed towards darker dogs. According to late Mrs Stonex with her famous Dorcas kennel the earliest Goldens, ie the ones bred by Lord Tweedmouth himself, were very pale and not dark at all! And this might explain why the breed tends to become light-colored, if the breeder don’t intentionally bread on color.
And yes, I do have a cream Golden! ;-) Keep up your good work!
Theo
It depends on what you mean by cream. I have a light gold with cream shadings. I would call her a cream, and there were dogs of that type. There were no almost white dogs until the 1950′s or 1960′s.
It wasn’t just Lewis Harcourt who bred with the blacks. The Earl of Shrewsbury did, too.
However, because the genes that determine black are very different from the genes that determine yellow or red, it has almost no effect on the intensity of color. Now, I know this because I have experience in Labradors. Black Labs that throw yellows don’t always throw very dark yellows. In fact, to get a black to throw a “fox red” you have to have fox red as your recessive yellow. So I’ve never bought that argument.
I have to say I disagree with you because I’ve seen lots of photos and painting of the Tweedmouth dogs– none are pale. None. I allow light gold with light shading, but not almost white.
In the 1890′s and early 1900′s, their color was darker. I believe this is British golden revisionist history, and that’s not the first time I’ve come across it. Nous was a rather dark dog, as was Lady, the Texas ranch golden.
That dog in the photo you ID is just a light gold. Light golds existed within the strain, but I doubt that any almost white ones did.
Plus, I tend to think of myself as a purist– I follow a lot of what Winifred Charlesworth did in establishing the breed (her one real fault was that she believed the Russian circus dog story).
Now, the only really light ones I can find come Col. William Le Poer Trench’s dogs, but these were not part of the early golden lines. They were shown as a different breed (Yellow Russian retrievers), and they do look a lot like modern show dogs. However, every source I have says that this line was never used in the three foundational lines of golden, and that they died out when he passed away.
The dog in my avatar is Ch. Noranby Diana. I particularly like that dog. I had one very similar to her growing up, just my dog was a bit more a tawny color.
This is one of the first goldens– “Ada” (Nous X Belle): http://www.shilohpark.net/Henry%201st%20Earl%20of%20Illchester.jpg
I’ve seen this painting in color, and the dog is a light gold with white paws. It is not almost white. This is usually the dog that is pointed to give evidence for the early cream color. However, it’s not cream as we know it today.
The original color range was about like this: http://retrieverman.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/noranby-diana1.jpg
Although Noranby Sandy was a bit lighter in color, and I’ve read references to that dog’s cream color. However it wasn’t “almost white.”
http://retrieverman.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/mrs-charlesworth.jpg (Sandy is on the left; Balfour is on the right).
Her dogs all became much darker and lightly built as the years progressed.
Keep in mind that these dogs were considered part of the flat-coat breed until 1911-1912, and they were bred according to what was functional in the flat-coated breed– “power without lumber; raciness without weediness.” If you would like some analysis on what early flat-coat people thought was useful, check out George T. Teasdale-Buckell’s The Complete English Shot. He was in flat-coats as soon as they began to standardize. Also in his book is the top working retriever Don of Gerwn, a liver flat-coat with a light golden (the cream-color of that day) sire and a liver flat-coat dam. He won the International Gundog League’s Retriever Trial in 1904 or 1903 (I can’t remember off the top of my head). To me he looks like a liver-colored golden. Teasdale-Buckell also owned several dogs that appear at some point in the Guisachan pedigree or whose progeny appear in it. Teasdale Buckell also owned the first “narrow-headed” flat-coat, called “Jenny” or “Wisdom.” There are also photos of flat-coats which have as much bone as Newfoundland dogs and could easily be mistaken for them. Teasdale-Buckell and his comrades bred out a lot of bone in the flat-coat breed, which also affected the golden’s conformation. That’s why the goldens of the early period of their status as a separate breed look like flat-coats, and why the working strain have a very strong resemblance to the flat-coats.
As a lover of working retrievers, I much prefer a lighter-built dog with more leg and less feathering than I see in the show ring. I also like the darker colors, partially out of an historical romanticism and partially because the absolute best dog I ever had was a dark golden retriever that looked a bit like an Irish setter.