They’ve been replaced.
By a fad.
The cream-colored Newfoundland, posing as a golden.
Would you pay $1,000 and up for a dog that is likely to have no retrieving instinct, a surly temperament, seizures, and truncated (10-12 year) lifespan?
And here’s a lie that is being promulgated: the original goldens were this color. WRONG.
Ada was not a cream-colored dog! She was light gold!
Ada was one of four bitch puppies born to a breeding between Belle. a Tweed water spaniel/water dog, and Nous, a dark gold wavy-coat. Belle had to have been a lighter colored dog than Nous, who was quite dark. The 1st Baron Tweedmouth bred this litter as a foundation stock of yellow or reddish wavy-coats.
Anyway, it’s pretty obvious that he did not prefer this color because he used a lot of red setter in the outcrosses to darken his dogs and given them stronger bird sense and stamina.
I’ve read this line about the cream being the original color too many times. It’s simply not true. The original color was light gold to golden red. Cream shadings were allowed. The light color was in the Tweed water dog, but it was not common among the dogs at Berwick-upon-Tweed, where the ancestors of the golden came from. It was only as the Tweed water spaniel died out that light colors began to predominate, perhaps through some ill-advised crossings with scent hounds.
If you can find me one of this light color that can work as well as the ones specially bred for work, I’ll drop my complaint. I’ve never seen one.
