This dog isn’t a working dog. He’s a pet.
But he does retrieve with a rather stong intensity:
He’s what used to be average, pet quality for a golden. I could get a dog like this out of the newspaper.
With some work, he’d be a find working dog, although probably not a top trial contender.
In most parts of the US and nearly all parts of Europe, finding a good goldens is a bit like looking for a rare breed. In fact, you’d probably be better off looking for flat-coats or trial quality Labs, because the quality of these dogs are a bit better able to ensure.
A dog like this one could be trained and molded into a decent working dog. All I look for in a pup is relatively strong retrieving instinct. If I have that, I can work with it. (I’m much more concerned about genetic disorders and the conformation of the parents. I don’t want to get a blond Newfoundland.)
A dog like this one wouldn’t last five minutes in a dog show. He’d just be a point dog for some flowing coated, blocky “beauty” to beat.
This dog is probably a bit too much for the average pet owner, but he’s not entirely unsuitable as a pet. Provided, of course, that he receives exercise.
It’s very likely that he’s just a pet-line dog, whose ancestors aren’t that far removed working dogs. Where I live, most pet-line dogs are of this type.
I certainly know that we had a really hard time when looking for a golden that would work and have a chance of getting some results in shows (this is in Finland)… I really wish that goldens would return more to their roots – I accept (and like) the fact that they are a bit calmer and larger than flatcoats. The current trend of fluffy couch potatoes that can barely run around the ring without getting winded I can’t stand.
The golden in the video looks quite a bit like a yellow flatcoat in my eye ;)
In America, the two lines of golden have only recently split.
I kind of like an obsessive, drivey dog, though. I supposed its a trade-off between calmness and mellowness and endurance and drive. I’ve had goldens that were so active and obsessive that they would only calm down if allowed to retrieve about 100 times a day.
Your yellow flat-coat looks more like a golden to my eye, so it’s just a difference in perspective.
Flat-coats really are back where they used to be. They went through a period where they had no bone at all and very narrow heads. I see them gradually coming back to the dogs of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Goldens are far off course.
In fact, in Finland or any country using the FCI/KC standard for a golden, this dog would not be shown at all because of his reddish color.
Looks and acts like my first dog, a presumed field-bred golden retriever, born ca. 1974.
As different from the yellow Newfie as seagulls and chickens.
She had true golden temperament. I never see it any longer.
I see it very rarely.
My first golden was also of this type. I call her a red flat-coat now, because that’s basically what she was.
I wonder sometimes, if a show breeder desire to make their dogs look unique compared to the ‘BYB or lower quality’ pet dogs doesn’t fuel some of the more extreme type fads out there.
I say that because many times, Mill or BYB-bred dogs often tend to not be as exaggerated or look very different than their breeds looked 20+ years ago. The show styles, however, often have changed a lot and those lines often become much more distinctively ‘show lines’.
In the past five years, the show lines just suddenly shifted in goldens here.
In Europe, it was nearly 30 years ago when they shifted.
It’s actually easier to get a pet dog of this type, because none of the BYB or mill people want them. People have been told that the very dark colors are not accepted in golden retrievers (only with the FCI or KC standard is this true.)
Plus, I still run into people who think that all red golden retrievers are Irish setter crosses, which they are, as are the very light ones.
Show styles differ because of the caprices of the show ring. These judges couldn’t possibly be true experts in all of these breeds, so unusual type has to influence their decision. What are termed “fancy points” in the show ring soon become institutionalized, eventually winding up as explicit in the standard.
Some of these breeds are improperly classified, such as the Dachshund, Norwegian Elkhound, and the Standard Poodle.