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Natural History

by Scottie Westfall

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« St. Johns Water Dogs in the Tweed Water Spaniel’s Ancestry
A Short History of the Peke and Other Asian Brachycephalic Breeds »

A Comparison of Golden Body Types

December 5, 2008 by SWestfall3

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

This one?

American show golden:

show-golden

Or this one?

Field-type golden:

red-golden-with-tennis-ball

Which is closer to the originals?

The Originals:

noranby-diana

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:

red-fox-comparison

A coyote:

coyote-comparison

A wolf:

wolf-comparison

A dingo:

dingo-comparison

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.

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Field type golden retriever, show type golden retriever, wild dogs, working conformation, working type golden retriever | 1 Comment

One Response

  1. on January 23, 2009 at 7:46 pm Watch the German Shepherd Deteriorate Before Your Very Eyes « Retrieverman’s Weblog

    […] what happened to the golden retriever here. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Are golden retrievers becoming more […]



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