Ch. Haulstone Dan’s sire was Dual Ch. Balcombe Boy, who belonged to a Mr. Hermon and was bred by 1st Viscount Harcourt. Judging from the appearance of both dogs, Dan very much took after his sire. Dan would become a Crufts Gold Cup winner and eventually earned 6 challenge certificates, achievements that a dog like him today simply wouldn’t win. He would probably be deemed a “red” and be penalized severely– perhaps more so than the KC standard requires. And never mind that his type is very different from virtually all European conformation dogs.
He was the maternal grandsire of the best known Haulstone golden, Ch. Haulstone Marker.
The Haulstones were an early line of goldens that were kept by a Mr. Joseph Eccles at the Halston Estate in Shropshire. Their initial golden retriever had been purchased as a “liver flat-coat,” but the dog was definitely a golden.
The Eccleses’ breeding program was quite notable because of their experimental outcrossing to FT. CH. Haylers Defender, a yellow Labrador.
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I don’t need to tell you that I really like this type of golden. They are the Robert Redfords of the dog world. Rugged but handsome, perhaps even a bit elegant, but still without extremity or vanity. Something like a drop-eared, feathered dingo.
That’s a handsome dog. There seems to be a great deal of variability in how dry the mouth it, or how tight the lips are in Goldens.
Most of the Goldens of the 1920s were very much of this sort, what many today would call “working type”.
In the attempt to breed dogs that were of uniform coloring (without shading) which was the “fashion” of that time, the darker dogs were a result. In the ’30s, people began to realize that the lighter shadings on golden dogs were typical and not to be selected against (hence the addition of “cream” in the 1936 revision of the Standard, to allow for the lighter shadings).
A Haulstone bitch (Haulstone Patsy) was one of the early imports to the USA, and one of the first Goldens to earn a field trial placement (as well as show points).