This early light-colored dog from the 1950's or 1960's is still darker than the legions of "white" dogs that swarm European lines today.
In North America, our lines of golden have largely been immune to what I call the “‘white’ dog craze” that has already rocked Europe. Our show dogs were a bit heavy in the bone and heavy in the coat, but they largely weren’t coarsely built dogs that lumber around like bears.
Those days have changed.
All you have to do is go on youtube and type into the search function “white golden retriever,” and a plethora of European show-style golden breeders have videos on there. I don’t mind promoting you dogs online, but I wonder if these breeders are doing health checks and screening of their stock?
Never mind that European show goldens can’t work as long or as well a field type. Never mind that possessive aggression appears to be heritary in these lines. (A recent episode of the Dog Whisper had one with that issue. Although I don’t much like the show, this dog was the first golden I’ve ever seen snarl.) Never mind that the breed’s founders, including the 1st Baron Tweedmouth, always bred for darker dogs. Mrs. Charlesworth, although a proponent of the Russian circus dog hoax, refused to breed any dogs that were very pale in color. And in her day, they weren’t “white.” They were light golden dogs with some cream shadings.
Of course, none of this matters to people who want to sell you a dog for exorbitant profits. They tell you that the dogs are much calmer than the American and certainly more so than the field types. Then they quote the KC (of the UK) standard, which doesn’t allow for dark dogs (however, that standard is not the standard we use here.) Then they claim, although somewhat correctly, that the first litter that the 1st Baron Tweedmouth bred from Nous and Belle were creams. They were creams or really light golds, but they weren’t “white.” And it’s pretty obvious that the 1st Baron Tweedmouth did try to darken up his dogs quite a bit by adding “red setter” (probably Irish) blood to his strain.
Breeding “rare white goldens” that are “calm” is not really a breeding strategy for the best dogs. It is breeding for a market. A market that is highly susceptible to fads. In fact, it is based on nothing more than fads. We want “white goldens.” Why? Because Oprah has some!
My advice is not to refuse to buy a light colored dog, but if it lacks working conformation or refuses to work itself. Don’t buy it. Do you really want a white furry rug that lies around the house all day?
If you do, then really don’t want a golden retriever. You just want the idea of having a golden retriever. And you really don’t need one. There are plenty of very low energy nonworking breeds that you can buy. Plus, there are lots of good mongrels that have those characteristics.
Those little “Knut” polar bear golden puppies might be really cute, but this is what they mature into. A dog that lies around all the time, and when it does move, it’s really slow. Generally, their lumbering gait gets slower by age 5 and, by 10, they don’t want to move much at all. It’s nice if you want a dog to just lie around all day. It’s not very nice if you want a real golden retriever.
In British trials, you do see some of these light lumbering dogs around, but their field lines are very much like ours. Check this out, if you’d like to see it in practice. The dog in the top picture is the only European show type dog doing anything. And I’m sure that after about an hour of hard work, it will be down and out, exhausted or in pain.
Read this before you comment.
I think most of the breeds that have or had strong working histories face similar problems. They have an intensity that is very attractive to people but that is too much for most of modern American society. Unfortunately (in some ways) , they often are very beautiful, so they attract people who don’t use them for their real purpose. As the number of non-users rises among the stewards of the breed, discussion of their modern purpose begins. Usually that brings temperament changes to make them more suitable for people who admire the beauty and can’t handle the intensity.
I own an Aussie, and I used to own a Malinois. Both of these were mild-mannered for their breeds but still lots of dog. The Malinois was one of the most beautiful dogs I’ve ever seen, and the Aussie is very pretty, too. Although the Malinois came trained (she was over 4yo when she entered my life), training the Aussie and keeping both of them well-mannered took effort that most people couldn’t see. I’ve spent the last 12 years telling far more people they do NOT want a dog of either breed than I have saying, “yeah, get one.”
Even I have my doubts about my fitness to own either breed. Wish me luck, though. I’m hoping to get an Aussie puppy in a few months from lines bred for 40 years to work cattle. We’ll see if I can rise to the challenge of helping him grow up in suburbia and still be a happy, healthy, well-adjusted dog.
I will say this: Malinois are too much dog for me. Very dominant, smart dogs with high prey drive are a bit harder to handle than a dog with low dominance, smart dogs with high prey drive. One wants to be a good corporate manager, while the other wants to be the CEO.
I’ve never been around an Aussie that didn’t work cattle. I know exactly what you’re talking about with the drive and energy.
With my breed, I’ll give this warning. What people don’t realize is that you can breed a dog that isn’t afraid of much and has a soft temperament. Both of those are really unusual in wild animals, because most animals with that temperament would wind up dead. You can breeed that same animal to be more responsive to the human voice and body language than the average dog (I suspect that’s what all “high trainability” breeds are). But then if you add one more trait (in this case, extreme calmess) the whole balance of the dog falls apart. I think people want too much out of a dog. They really dislike a dog’s nature, so they try to breed away from that. They really dislike dogs as dogs, but they seem to love the idea of dogs. At some point, we have to just say that the idea has little to do with the reality. Dogs, regardless of breed, aren’t furry people, and they certainly aren’t good objects of conspicuous consumption. And we’ve already pushed their natures and biology to the extreme. If we push it even more, I think the whole animal lwill lose its viability.
I have to just put up a record that at least points out some mischaracterizations of the original post. I have several English dogs. I have owned several Americans. While I agree 100% that promoting them as rare or white is incorrect and a ploy, they will not be the ruination of the American Golden. That feat was achieved in the last 10 – 20 years by poor breeding practices. Breeders here will not acknowledge that they have failed in any way to protect the health and temperament of the Golden. Until they do some reflecting upon that, they will not even be able to begin the process of correcting it. The bloodlines here are so lacking in diversity and so greatly compounded with hip, cancer, and eye problems that I fear there is not much time left. I will say that I think the Field lines here have done a better job of health protection because they must maintain performance – the show lines are utterly doomed. Cancer is now over 60% of the mortality rate in Americans compared to 38% in the European statistic and those deaths are largely in the 10-13 year old range whereas here the age is younger and younger.
So you have field lines who are possibly healthier, but can’t sit still to be a pet. You have show lines purporting to be the best thing going; when the entire rest of the world adheres to a different standard based upon Lord Tweedmouth’s original. Show breeders here (and I won’t name them – but people name them everyday) who are plagued with cancer, OCD, pigmentary uveitis, and a whole host of once obscure diseases that are now rampant. I would happily put up a couple of my girls (though they are not field trained) to go after a tennis ball all day long if you wanted them to. The beauty part is that if you wanted them to lay at your feet – they’d be just as happy doing that. Oprah’s goldens came from a wretched puppy mill. I suspect that cream that Cesar worked with did too or it was not appropriately socialized as a puppy. This can happen anywhere. As someone who has handled a great deal of both; I can tell you that like it or not, listen or not, we had better get some English in the lines here or there will be no genes to correct with. Where would you go in the American lines to get healthy, correct temperament?
The destruction of the American Golden is at hand I agree, but where you claim its the English that are doing it, I claim its the English that stand the only chance of fixing it. BTW, I have a girl who is sired not only by a Show champion, but also a trialer; a very rare feat indeed. I hope you take my comments with the helpful advice they were meant to be.
My problem is that there are more than just American and English goldens. There’s another group that’s left out, and they are far more healthy. And 80 times smarter than either of the two. They live into their teens. These are the performance bred dogs from either Europe or North America. And almost none of them have “English” conformation or behavior.
I prefer a performance bred dog, regardless of whether it comes from America or the UK. They look almost the same, and are often confused with setter crosses.
My first two dogs, which were spayed at the ages of 3 and 4 respectively, lived well-past the average age for an “American.”
If I had it my way, I’d bred performance dogs back to the flat-coat, because the flat-coat has the temperament and conformation I prefer.
The light color is not historically correct for the breed, either. They were never so pale that the looked like Kuvaszok, and they also never looked like Bernese Moutain dog or a modern Newfoundland. Think coppery-colored or red flat-coat.
What I’m talking about is almost a different breed from what currently exists in the show ring, either in American or European lines. Mrs. Winifred Charlesworth, the person most credited with separating the breed from the flat-coat and who wrote the first breed standard, would be very upset right now. She bred out the coarse heavy bone in her dogs and turned them into good workers as well as show dogs. Of course, you’ll never see Noranby type dog in the ring now, although you may see one in the field. Her main collaborator, Lord Harcourt, had a very similar type of dog, which was interbred with black flat-coats. He’s the fellow who coined the phrase “golden retriever.” This was about 50 years after the 1st Baron Tweedmouth founded that strain.
However, the US performance line has some real issues with genetic diversity. It’s hard to find a single dog that doesn’t have Holway Barty in its pedigree, and it’s hard to find European performance line that doesn’t have Holway somewhere in it. There’s a breeder in Sweden who mixes in the show-line dogs (which are British in Sweden) as an outcross, but that first outcross produces puppies that are rather difficult to work with. The backcross to the working line tends to produce far better results.
I just prefer a harder driving dog that still has some setter characteristics ( particularly long-cast quartering) in its behavior (I’ve seen one or two that would actually go on point), and with a more athletic and agile frame. In short, a dog that might be useful for other things besides field work– SAR, sniffer dog, agility, fly-ball, etc.
I think what really killed them was the rewriting of the standards in both the UK (which was first) and here, which preferred a heavier dog than what was really competitive or efficient in the field. And that’s why they’ve split into two Balkanized gene pools.
I think that ultimately we’re going to have to think outside the breed if we’re ever going to save them, and I don’t think breeding them to slow-moving, lumbering dogs is such a smart idea. When goldens and flat-coats were the same breed, they decided rather early on to breed out the lumber and excessive bone– which is exactly what the UK/FCI golden standard requires. The flat-coat/golden in those days was the trial dog– not the Labrador. The winner of the 1904 International Gundog League’s retriever trial was out of a Tweedmouth dog and liver flat-coat dam- Don of Gerwn.
I’ve been around British show- type dogs, and most of them are only slightly more clever than sheep– no drive, “no ambition,” cute, mellow, excellent floor mats.
I’m more in favor of the Old Swamp Collie dog.
I like you! I think we would probably have a lot to agree upon actually. Usually if I point out my defense of the ‘English’ I get nothing back but mindless defenses trying to throw it all off on the coat. I think you make fine points. I have no skills with which to teach my guys for field work, and frankly neither the time nor inclination. But I will tell you this; my first English girl is the fastest, most wiry, pivoting, calculating smart thing – who loves water so much she’ll break a skin of ice to get in! Interesting to note that when I got her as a puppy I had only Americans. She was ‘raised’ to some degree by my very smart, go getter American. Frankly she (the American) would have been a working wonder if someone had her that knew what they were doing. She gave her drive and ambition to my very sweet, but athletic English girl. I truly wonder what would happen if you took an English with an athletic, water loving, go getter attitude and raised her with field dogs in a field dog manner.
Honestly, I do prefer the quieter side myself, but its a joy to see a retriever go for something at top speed. Its majesty – if you stay away from the fad chasers, I’ll just bet you could find an English experiment you could turn into a dream. Have you ever taken a look at a dog named ‘Gunmarsh Zachary’? Go hit k9data.com and check him out.
Thanks for engaging in conversation with me. Much more than I got over at golden retriever forums!LOL
One more note as we were mentioning the ‘greats’ in goldens. Someone told me one time that they knew Joan Tudor and if a family came over to look at a puppy and all they were interested in was coat color and they constantly brushed the dog hair off their clothes that she would usher them off the property but fast! Hehe – love to see that.
An English like that would have a place in the a field breeding program. Not only does she have new genes, but she’s got the working ability.
Now, this Gunmarsh Zachary dog is really interesting. He’s the first one of these dogs I’ve seen that actually has it. The only thing to worry about is that he could become a most-used sire. Using one sire too many times results in truncated genetic diversity.
It’s really interesting about color. Mrs. Charlesworth had heavily-built, lightly colored dog that could work well that popped up in her line. This dog was Noranby Tweedlum. She refused to breed from him. She wanted a lighter dog with a darker coat. If she saw what was being shown in Britain today, she’d probably die.
I’m all for increasing genetic diversity in the breed, and it’s possible that we may have to use the English line dogs that have no working ability at all. And if we have to do that save the breed, so be it. I’d just rather not have to. A lot of the working dogs have more in common with the flat-coat than the English show dogs. It’s not that flat-coats are perfect– they have a bad, bad cancer rate– and it’s usually those cancers that get the dogs 8 or 9, not 12 or 13.
It’s not so much speed that I’m looking for. I’m looking for an efficient gait. It’s almost what you look for in a good gaited horse. The show type walk like heavy draft horses, while the lightest flat-coats walk like Tennessee walking horses. I like a dog that keep its back level when it walks, something I think is well-emphasized in the standard.
I’m also not looking for weedy, whippet of a retriever. I’m just wanting moderation.
I looked up Gunmarsh Zachary’s progeny. He seems to pass on an interesting characteristic, something I don’t actually see much in English show line goldens. He has a very well developed forechest. And most of his get seem to have this characteristic. This chest can help a heavier dog move in the water far better than if it didn’t have the these muscles well-developed.