Natural History

Which of these dogs has a functional body type, one that is designed for maximum health and energy efficiency?

This one?

American show golden:

Or this one?

Field-type golden:

Which is closer to the originals?

The Originals:

Show dog breeders like to think that they’re breeding to an ancient, refined definition of a breed. In the case of the golden retriever, they are not.

I would love to see morbidity and general health survey on working-type goldens versus show type goldens. The dogs I’ve had have all been working type. Life expectancy was 13-14 years. The average life expectancy for goldens in Sweden is 12.6. Most breed infos I’ve seen say 10-12 years for a golden retriever,  except for the Encyclopedia of the Dog  by Bruce Fogle (the original version from 1995). That version says 13-15 years for a golden, which is about my dogs lived. The 2000 edition used the Swedish moribidity data.

I hate to use one of those “appeal to nature” logical fallacies, but compare the body types of those goldens with that of some wild dogs (going from least related to most related to the golden).

A red fox:

A coyote:

A wolf:

A dingo:

Which of the two goldens at the top resembles these wild species most? Nature has taken millions of years to form the dog’s skeletal structure, and in 150 years, we’ve totally wrecked it. And goldens aren’t even the most messed up breed.