Here is the current range in color for goldens in the UK and FCI lines (these dogs are from Germany):
The dog on the right is more typical of the color one sees in the pet and conformation lines. The dog on the left is actually gold in color, but these dogs make up the minority of the population of KC and FCI dogs.
So I guess they would be better off calling their dogs “cream retrievers.”
However, in the 1930’s, this was the original color range:
The 1938 standard revision allowed cream, and cream-colored dogs became very popular within a period of 25-30 years. Currently, very dark dogs are almost nonexistent outside of North America, and virtually all goldens in Europe, especially in the show lines, are fairly pale in color.
Every once in a while, I get someone who make the claim that all the Guisachan dogs were cream. Not true, actually. They were gold, and some of the later dogs in the strain were fairly dark, though not as dark as those two 1930’s dogs in the image above.
***
The first image of those German dogs comes from one of the better golden retriever books, Valerie Foss’s The Ultimate Golden Retriever.
I found it on a breeder site while perusing Google Images. I recognized it instantly.
The book actually discusses the different types of golden. I was particularly enchanted with some of UK field-type dogs. They resemble our field-types almost exactly. One cannot say the same about field-type Labradors, which have diverged into distinct types on both sides of the Herring Pond.
I thought the range of colors on these sites were interesting.
http://www.goldkeygoldens.com/BreedStandard.html
http://www.goldenretriever-france.com/english/standarde/coule.htm
The Brits like to say they allow more color in their dogs.
Maybe, but we still have the very dark colors and they can be shown.
They would call them reds or mahoganies.
Really, a lot of really richly gold dogs approach a.reddish coloration. It is really a matter of perspective. What I think of as mid-gold might be red gold to another.
So to avoid that confusion, it’s just easier to bred for pale cream.
That’s what happened in the UK.
It’s tautological to get into an argument about where the line between gold and red is.
It is almost impossible to find a golden the color of an Irish setter (show Irish red setter), but it’s always a worry.
Here’s one that has the mahogany color: https://retrieverman.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/mahogany-golden-ii.jpg
Its breeches are even mahogany, which is pretty unusual. Normally very dark dogs have lighter breeches.
I am fine with allowing the very dark colors in the breed, as well as the very pale.
They should coexist.
But when you breed out the very dark colors, you lose them. They are not recessive to pale cream.
Ah, I was going to ask if you lost the darks by breeding for the light colors.
http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/content/98/5/544.full
http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/content/98/5/544.full
It’s actually quite complex.
But basically, all Goldens (and yellow Labradors) are ee (MDR1) and the cream individuals have an additional factor that is responsible for the paling of the yellow pigment to produce the cream or white effect.
It is either the chinchilla gene or a polymorphism that is responsible for cream color. It is in some way recessive to the darker color. You lose darker colors by breeding for lighter ones, but you don’t lose lighter ones if you breed for darker ones. Otherwise, the very light colored dogs would have disappeared in the 1930’s, when very dark was the preferred color.
It’s not actually well understood what causes it. That’s the point of the study.
We don’t fully understand how it’s inherited (as strange as that sounds).
But I do know that if you breed English cream goldens together, you won’t have mahogany or red gold puppies.
http://www.tsuwa-snapdraggon.com/index.php/goto-tsuwa/english-cream-golden-retriever-info
This person gets it!
LOL.
The extreme dilution gene is the best anyone can come up with.
No, I don’t think that person “gets it” at all. The homozygous ee does not block “full color”, it converts all black hair pigment to some shade of yellow/red. And the cream-that-appears-white is a different genetic entity than the white coat factors associated with deafness/blindness, but is the same as the white coat color in the Kuvasz, White Shepherd, and some other breeds.
For a complete discussion of coat colors in dogs: http://skyway.usask.ca/~schmutz/dogcolors.html. This is based on the research of Dr. Sheila Schmutz at the University of Saskatchewan.
It’s the genetics between gold versus cream that the person gets.
The cream color is not white. I did not read that part. That’s actually quite wrong.
White goldens aren’t truly white.
White GSD’s, Westies, and Samoyed are all white dogs that have e/e.
http://hnrworkingkelpies.com/Basic_Color_Genetics.html
http://abnormality.purpleflowers.net/genetics/albino.htm
Another interesting thing about goldens– weight.
Goldens are supposed to be a mid-sized dog, but they are much more substantial animals than Afghan hounds are. The maximum height at the shoulder for a male golden retriever in 24 inches. In the US, he’s supposed to be no more than 75 pounds. In the UK dogs, there is now weight requirement, but from the ones I’ve seen, the biggest males are easily within the 80 pound range. Now, they aren’t the giant pet line dogs we all see. But the functional size for the wavy-coated retriever was estimated by Rawdon Lee to be between 50 and 68 pounds.
A big male Afghan– according to the standard– maxes out at 60 pounds and is 29 inches at the shoulder.
My thing about color is the working-line dogs tend to be darker in color– the result of founder effect.
Saying can’t be these colors is akin to saying that border collies can no longer be black and white.
It has had a bad effect on the kind of golden one gets in Europe.
You have to hunt for actual working line dogs if you want a working type dog. Those working lines don’t have very diverse gene pools, mainly because there isn’t really anything to outcross to. Except importing our working lines, which is now possible with the decline of the quarantine.