The First Baron Tweedmouth bred Belle and Nous in 1868. Four yellow bitch puppies were to found Tweedmouth’s line of wavy-coats. Their names were Ada, Crocus, Primrose, and Cowslip.
Here’s a pic of Ada:
This is a portrait featuring "Ada." Ada was the result of a breeding between "Nous," a yellow wavy-coat, and "Belle," a Tweed water spaniel. It is remarkable how similar Ada looks to certain light golden bitches of today. Her coat is shorter than normal, though. This probably comes from the Tweed water spaniel, which had a shorter coat.
Those four bitches were bred to the following breeds: a red setter (perhaps Irish or a red Gordon setter), another Tweed Water Spaniel, and two black wavy-coats. One of these black wavy-coats, “Tracer,” was a full brother to an early wavy-coat champion named “Moonstone.” In that dog’s ancestry were early wavy-coats, and one dog said to be a cross between a wavy-coat and a “Labrador,” meaning the early strain of that breed derived from the St. John’s water dog. As the line developed, red setters were recrossed into the mix and so were black wavy-coats. The reason why black dogs were used in the cross is because the black coloration was the default color for wavy-coats and to ensure that the puppies were born with black skin pigment. Dogs that were yellow with brown skin pigment were deemed ugly and, for some reason, tended to be more difficult to train. (If you look at field champion Labradors, virtually no field champion yellow has brown skin pigment. Many of these yellows tend to be darker in color as well. These are called “Fox red” Labradors.)
The Marjoribanks family kept this breed, and the line was successful. It was interbred with other strains of wavy-coat. At this time, wavy-coats were a working breed. They were bred solely for their working ability. This breed varied in type from a “Newfoundlandy” type, which was heavily built and very long-coated. Others were more setter-like, with racy builds and less coat. A few others looked like water spaniels, with really curly and wavy coats, while very few had some collie features, such as a narrow muzzle and high-set ears. Today, these types appear in golden retrievers, with the Newfoundlandy type appearing more and more often in the show ring, and the other types appearing in performance bred lines. All of these reflect the diverse origins of the wavy-coated retriever breed, which is really similar to the diverse origins of all the retrievers.
Dogs of Lord Tweedmouth’s strain wound up in the hands of the family that held the title Earl of Ilchester and also into the hands of a British colonel, Le Poer Trench, who really started the awful rumor about the Russian circus dogs that were the ancestors of golden retrievers. His dogs were called Russian Retrievers, and they were shown against yellow flat-coated retrievers that were also descended from Tweedmouth’s strain. He presented one of his dogs, “St. Hubert’s Peter,” to George V, who was a great pheasant shooting enthusiast. Here’s his portrait:
He looks like a modern working-type golden, doesn’t he?
To make matters really confusing, Tweedmouth’s strain of yellow wavy-coats were originally registered as liver wavy-coats. Genetically, liver is a different color from yellow. Liver dogs carry a gene for brown skin pigment and a gene for black coat color. The brown skin pigment overwhelms the black gene, and the whole body winds up brown. The eyes are amber or green in color, and the skin pigment winds up brown. Golden retrievers have a gene for black skin pigments (at least the vast majority of them do), and if crossed with a liver-coated dog, you will get black puppies. A very dark red golden could look liver in a certain light, especially if it had brown skin pigment. The Chesapeake Bay retriever has coloration like this, in which some individuals are yellow-to-red in coat genetics with brown skin pigment and some are true livers. Nova Scotia duck tolling retrievers also have this coloration but have no livers. Because of this confusion, some golden retrievers are still born today with brown skin pigment, which is a hidden recessive to the more common black skin pigment. St. Hubert’s Peter had brown skin pigment, if you look closely.
At some point, it was decided that wavy-coats needed flat or straight coats. Goldens experienced this selection as well. It is possible that setters were further crossed in, which might explain why the early goldens that were culled off from the flat-coat in 1915, were very dark red in color.
In 1908, the Kennel Club recognized a yellow coloration in the flat-coated retriever. Most of these “light livers” qualified as yellows. In 1915, this breed was culled off as the golden retriever. Before this time, Labrador, flat-coated/wavy-coated, and golden retrievers were all heavily interbred and then registered according to phenotype. It is well-recognized that flat-coats and Labs are closely related, but many people ignore that the golden retriever was part of the flat-coated breed at this time.
Today, yellow flat-coats are not uncommon. This happens because one of the early flat-coat studs of the time Don of Gerwn carried the yellow gene. He had a Tweedmouth strain wavy rather close in his pedigree. Black is dominant to yellow to red in retrievers, so he carried that gene into the flat-coat gene pool. It is possible that other black and even liver flat-coats carried this gene as well. Liver-flat coats often have a different color liver than other gundogs, approaching a chestnut in color. Some of these livers actually carry the yellow to red gene, and when bred to another flat-coat of that genotype, produce yellow pups with brown pigment. Not all “chestnut” livers carry this coloration, and most of the yellow-flatties I’ve seen come from black flatties.
Here’s a liver flat-coat that has the chestnut color:
Liver flat-coat. This reddish-tinge is very common in liver flat-coats. It is actually preferred over a dark liver color. Some these dogs may carry the yellow gene with brown skin pigment. Thanks to the way goldens and flat-coats were separated.
Here are some early champion golden retrievers:
The two dogs on the right appear really similar to that liver flat-coat on top. However, they are recessive yellow to reds, not livers. If the two were bred together, it is likely that most, if not all, of the puppies would be black. They would all be black if the flat-coat had no genes for yellow to red in its genotype.
Because of Don of Gerwn and the confusion between what’s yellow to red and what’s reddish liver whne the breeds were separated, flat-coats still produce yellow puppies that look like golden retrievers
A golden retriever is a yellow flat-coated retriever that has been bred to a different standard for many generations. The two breeds have since developed different temperaments and appearance, with the golden being more sedate than the flat-coat. Goldens still come in truly wavy-coats, while flat-coats come only in straight-flat coats. Flat-coats still maintain much of their working conformation. They are lightly-built and moderately feathered. The only goldens that have this type are those still bred for working purposes. A working-type golden tends to be more like the flat-coat in temperament, while the show-type is really a different sort of dog.
I’ve now explained to you the origin of the golden retriever. In my next installment, I am going to explain some questions I have about the supposed bloodhound cross in golden retrievers. I am very skeptical. (I’m not denying that in the 1840′s, there was a dog that looks like a golden-bloodhound cross in a painting, but that’s not evidence of bloodhounds being crossed into golden retrievers in the period from 1868 to 1900. Bloodhounds and other scenthounds may have been crossed in at the earliest development of retriever types, however, which is what this dog represents.) I am also planning pieces on “Lady,” the first American golden, and how the golden split into performance types and American and European show types.
“This reddish-tinge is very common in liver flat-coats. It is actually preferred over a dark liver color.”
I disagree. Dark liver coats are very desirable in FCRs. There is a range of liver coat colors, and liver coats do bleach in the sun (something that presents a problem for fcr owners who do field events and conformation events), but the darker coats are NOT penalized, and are frequently preferred by judges and breeders.
Also, the yellow-colored FCR is the result of the action of a different gene than the gene that determines whether the pup will be black or liver. That yellow gene determines whether the pup’s true color will be expressed, The yellow gene is recessive. A pup with two yellow genes will still be genetically black or liver, but the coat color will not be expressed. Nose and foot pads will still be black on a genetically black yellow FCR, and brown on a genetically liver yellow FCR.
Yes, and I have a post on retriever coat color in heritance. The yellow is actually a recessive yellow to red e/e. It is an entirely different level of inheritance. I usually tell my friends who raise Labradors, where all colors exist, to be careful breeding yellows with the other two colors. Particularly, I tell them to breed yellow Labs to only black Labs and other yellows with black skin.
I found this out several years through an accidental mating between a golden of mine (a show type) and a brindle boxer. Every puppy in the litter was solid black in color. 99.9 percent of goldens are blacks. I’ve seen only one or two that had the brown skin and the light or amber eyes (although not all livers in other breeds have the eyes). The way I usually describe it is the gene for the real color is the color expressed in the skin pigment.
The skin pigment is what tells you what color yellow you have.
What I was talking about in that post is that dark red golden, which used to be really common, and liver with this tinge or bleaching is actually kind of hard to tell, unless you know the trick about the skin pigment. But what if you had a dark red golden with brown skin pigment, you might have problem telling it apart from a reddish liver.
In the old days, all of the yellow or recessive red dogs were livers, which makes this confusing.
I’m beginning to think that Don of Gerwin was probably a dark red dog, not a liver. His dam was named “Rust,” and I believe that she was descended from the Tweedmouth strain. “Sandy liver” as he’s described could be light liver or it could be red. There’s a photo of him in the Complete English Shot by George Teasdale Teasdale-Buckell, who was a major patron of the breed. He really hated a famous stud dog named Zelstone, who was probably a purebred St. John’s water dog (he’s listed as “Labrador” when he was bred to the dogs at Guisachan). He had long hair with feathering, but Teasdale-Buckell disliked that he bred in coarseness into his dogs.
When I talked to a flat-coat breeder a few years ago, she told me that the judges liked the chesnut or bleached tinge in livers. That’s what I was referring to.
Some judges like to see some sun-bleaching, which proves that the dog hasn’t been dyed. Some judges hate any liver FCR, and won’t put one up. They are harder to show in conformation, because every single fault is accentuated by the highlights in their coat.
In the book “The History of Retrievers” by Judi Seall, H. Reginald Cooke refers to Don of Gerwin (or Gerwyn or Gerwn) as a flatcoat. That would make sense, no matter what color he was (and in the portrait by Rose Bonnor, he is brown), since the Golden Retriever wasn’t defined as a separate breed until 1911.
In 1904, Don of Gerwyn’s owner, Mr. A. T. Williams, wrote to the Illustrated Kennel News. He was responding to a published letter from H.R. Cooke which stated that Don of Gerwin was a purebred, no a crossbred Retriever. Williams’ response states:
“I may be permitted to say that he is perfectly correct in saying there is no purer-bred Retriever than Don of Gerwin. … As to the liver colour, I consider it a most beautiful colour and Don is, to my mind, a very handsome dog. Of course, he is broader in the skull than the modern show bench Retriever; but he is all the better for that, and this may account for his extraordinary nose and brains.”
The Seall book includes photos of some Tweedside Retrievers that are much, much lighter in color.