Video from jwp1002.
Many goldens from field-lines or distant field line ancestry have puppies that have some white one them for the first few weeks of life. One of these puppies have a rather obvious blaze. Many also have big white spots on their chests, while others have white feet or even white legs that look like stockings. My first dog had some white hairs on the tip of her tail.
These blazes usually disappear, as do the white chest spots. However, white feet and white tail tips tend to be permanent.
And there is some historical basis for it.
One of the early Culham dogs, Culham Copper, had really obvious white markings:
He has a lot of white on his chest, white toes, and a white across the tip of the muzzle.
This white coloration is a throwback to the setter in them, although one should also point out that the St. John’s water dog often had white markings in the same areas.
Here are some working Irish setters from the eighteenth century, one of which has a blaze:
A red Irish setter is depicted to the right in this painting by George Stubbs. It has white markings in exactly the same areas we seen them in the golden. The other dog is probably an Irish red and white-- the original color for this breed of setter.
Many years ago, I had a rescue Golden who had the white spot on the chest. A Vet that I worked for explained to me that as dogs develop in utero, the color spreads out over the body, merging at the front of the chest so that spot, along with the tippy toes and end of tail are the last places to get the color. I’ve never investigated to see if that is correct but it’s one of those visuals that sticks in my mind.
That is 100 percent correct. It’s as true in dogs as it is in horses. On my ancestral farm, the pasture land is leased to a fellow who breeds Tennessee walking horses, and he has a hard time producing the perfect piebald pinto from his solid colored mares. The stud is a perfectly marked animal, and when he asked his equine vet why he couldn’t get perfect animals all the time, it was because of how the animals formed in the womb.
In goldens, you can have white markings on puppies, though, that disappear within the first two months.
This also happens with Flat Coated Retrievers. Again reinforcing the common ancestry.
Can you show me a picture of a flat-coat with some white on it? I’ve never seen one.
It comes from the setter and the St. John’s water dog?
I don’t have any pictures to show, just that as yellow is faulted so are markings. I can only say that in one of my Black FCR (the youngest one) before shows I am often plucking out white hairs. Our breeder told us that they can be born, although rarely, with white tips or blazes and are disqualified as non-standard.
Just judging by the white hairs found in my guy. I would say she is absolutely on the money.
In goldens, the darker colors seem to produce more puppies with white on them. Every single one of our puppies was born with a big white dot on the chest, which later disappeared, and few had white blazes that also disappeared. The ones with white feet and tail tips, though, retained those features.
These features are accepted in Duck Tollers. Which look like little Goldens.
They do look like them, but they act more like little collies than goldens.
They may have golden in them. But it’s generally accepted that they are a cross between a wavy-coated retriever/flat-coated retriever and the English decoy dog, with some collie and Irish setter thrown in. Nova Scotia has its own collie landrace, so it is that collie that is its ancestor. It is possible that golden was added to the gene pool, but I’ve seen no good evidence of this. And if it happened it was at a later date.
Most NSDTR’s are brown skinned yellow-to-red, so they are a different color than most goldens, which are black-skinned yellow to red.
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I haven’t looked at standards for Goldens lately, but I thought that small amounts of white, though not preferred, were allowed & not penalized? I used to see Goldens sometimes with a narrow little pencil blaze, or with white toes. And sometimes with a white spot or even a bib on the chest, or a small white tip to the tail, though I don’t recall ever seeing one with a white ring around its neck.