I know of only one case in the history of the modern dog fancy in which a fanciful story of a dog breed origin was rejected.
And that is with the golden retriever.
For first half the twentieth century, golden retrievers were said to have the following origin:
The Golden Retriever is a descendant of an old breed of dogs known as trackers, which are native to Asiatic Russia. Russian trackers are huge dogs measuring about 30 inches at the shoulder and often weighing 100 pounds. The breed serves man in a variety of ways in its homeland, among which, it is reported, is to guard isolated flocks of sheep in winter with great steadfastness and courage. According to the American Kennel Club, the circumstances leading to the development of the Golden Retriever breed primarily from tracker stock are as related below.
In 1860, Sir Dudley Marjoribanks watched the performance of a troupe of Russian tracker dogs at a circus in Brighton, England. He was impressed by the intelligence shown by these dogs and, reasoning that this could be put to good use in the field, he purchased the entire troupe of eight dogs and took them to his seat in the Guischan deer forest in Scotland. Here they were bred without out-crossing for 10 years, but there was no game in Scotland suitable to their size, and in about 1870 plans were abandoned to establish the breed in its original form.
The Golden Retriever is a powerfully built dog with a rich, golden-colored coat. Fine retrievers and agreeable companions, dogs of this breed are gaining in popularity in Illinois and the Middle West.
At this time the Russian trackers were crossed with Bloodhounds. There is no record of crosses with other breeds, and only one generation of Bloodhound crosses is reported, but the descendants appear, on the basis of photographic records and notes, to have soon developed into the present Golden Retriever type, whose characters included smaller size than the tracker, as well as intensification of scenting ability, refinement, and a slight darkening of the color of the coat.
–Ralph Yeater, “Bird Dogs in Sport and Conservation” (1948).
The dog in called the Russian tracker is actually some sort of ovtcharka, perhaps a Central Asian or a Caucasian. (Tracker may be an English corruption of the word “ovtcharka.”)
These dogs are not bird dogs.
They never have been.
They are about as unlike a golden retriever as another dog can be, but for some odd reason, people thought that this breed was an ancestor of the golden retriever. Golden retrievers are very social dogs. Ovtcharkas are very bonded to their families and flocks. Golden retrievers have been bred for pretty high prey drive. Ovtcharkas have been bred to have less prey drive. Golden retrievers have been bred to be agreeable with other dogs, including strange ones. Ovtcharkas have been bred to kill strange dogs that come too near their flocks.
Crossing a bloodhound with an ovtcharka will not magically create a golden retriever. It will not make the ovtcharka smaller or darken the coat.
All you will get a is an ovtcharka/bloodhound cross, which might be nice if you want a sheep dog than can track down missing sheep.
Despite the real problems with this story fitting what we already know about golden retrievers and those particular breeds of dog, people readily believed that story.
It was only rejected when the true story was revealed:
However the true history of the breed was first published by Lord Ilchester in 1952 in an article in the Country Life entitled “The Origin of the Yellow Retriever”. This was based on over ten years of research by Mrs Stonex and in 1959 she and Lord Ilchester put their findings to the Kennel Club.
In 1960 the Crufts catalogue carried the true origins of the breed as approved by the Kennel Club:
“Description of the Golden Retriever
‘The origin of the Golden Retriever is less obscure than most of the Retriever varieties, as the breed was definitely started by the first Lord Tweedmouth last century, as shown in his carefully kept private stud book and notes, first brought to light by his great-nephew, the Earl of Ilchester, in 1952.
In 1868 Lord Tweedmouth mated a yellow Wavy-Coated retriever (Nous) he had bought from a cobbler in Brighton (bred by Lord Chichester) to a Tweed Water Spaniel (Belle) from Ladykirk on the Tweed. These Tweed Water-Spaniels, rare except in the Border Country, are described by authorities of the time as like a small Retriever, liver-coloured and curly-coated. Lord Tweedmouth methodically line-bred down from this mating between 1868 and 1890, using another Tweed Water-Spaniel, and outcrosses of two black Retrievers, an Irish Setter and a sandy coloured Bloodhound. (It is now known that one of the most influential Kennels in the first part of the century which lies behind all present day Golden Retrievers was founded on stock bred by Lord Tweedmouth.)”
From this description it can be seen that all Golden Retrievers go back to the yellow retriever Nous who himself was obviously the produce of Flat – coated Retrievers. Many canine authorities of the day including Rawdon Lee in his Modern Dogs (1893) referred to brown retrievers including pale chocolate coloured dogs being bred from black parents.
In the pedigree of Prim and Rose, the last two yellow retrievers recorded in Lord Tweedsmouth’s records, one can see the influence of both the Flat-coated Retriever and the Tweed Water Spaniel in the development of the Golden Retriever.
Lord Ilchester was Lord Tweedmouth’s nephew, and he knew the dogs when he was young boy.
I am still very skeptical that bloodhound was ever used in the cross because there have never been any smooth-coated golden retrievers. Smooth coats in dog breed are almost always dominant over long coats, and they certainly are when golden retrievers are bred to scenthounds.
Bloodhounds are very unlike golden retrievers in that they are not particularly disposed to take direction, and golden retrievers are notoriously easy dogs to train. The mention of the bloodhound in them may be nothing more than a bit of lore from the old implausible Russian tracker story that filtered into the actual historiography.
The Irish setter in the cross is also somewhat misleading. The original record said “red setter,” which most likely meant red Gordon setter, which were quite common in region around Inverness at the time Lord Tweedmouth began breeding his dogs.
The golden retriever’s origins are with the wavy/flat-coated retriever, which is derived from the St. John’s water dog, an import from Newfoundland. Labrador retrievers are derived from the same stock, and for a time it was not unusual for smooth and long-coated pups to be born in retriever litters, even when they were being standardized into wavy-coated retrievers.
Why were people so willing to believe the nonsense about golden retrievers being ovtcharka/bloodhounds?
Well, for one thing, this story gave legitimacy to separating the color variety from the wavy/flat-coated retriever type.
Yellow and red dogs had a very hard time winning prizes at dog shows, so there was a pressure for them to leave.
However, if the dogs were nothing more than a color variety of the flat-coated retriever, then there would be no good reason to split the breed.
At the time flat-coated retrievers were the most common retriever in the UK. Almost all of them were black. Black was the color that every British gentleman wanted in his retrievers.
And that was the color that won at shows. It didn’t matter if the dog happened to have been a flat-coat or a curly-coat. Black dogs won over the other colors.
But if you have this story that claims that the golden retriever has some sort of exotic origin, then you have legitimacy in your move to split the variety from the black dogs.
Golden retrievers actually got the better deal out of the split than their black relatives, who often appeared in the same litters with them.
Flat-coated retrievers became quite rare during the Interwar years, but golden retrievers became more and more popular, particularly after the Second World War.
What amazes me most about this entire story, though, is how quickly the official golden retriever organizations accepted the true story and began dropping the Russian origins nonsense.
With so many other breeds, you can show the documentation about the actual origins, and they will simply deny it all.
Chinese crested dogs are from China. Dalmatians are from Croatia.
No evidence for either origin story exists.
But people want to believe it.
That is HILARIOUS! Even funnier because neither Caucasians nor Central Asians are Russian in origin. Where do people get this stuff?
Some of the texts refer to the Ovcharka from “South Russia”, which would be modern day Ukraine.
You have to remember some of these texts are very old and they are written from a British imperialist perceptive. To them, Tsarist Russia from Catherine the Great onward was one vast empire. It wasn’t until the rise of the Soviet Union (and fall of the Ottoman Empire and Austro-Hungarian Empire), westerners recognized the multiple political entities in eastern Europe, Central Asia and Far East.
That would be the South Russian Ovcharka, which looks very much like the Hungarian Komondor, beard & all (but not generally corded). 8-) The Caucasian is primarily from what is now modern day Georgia & the Central Asian is, of course, from Central Asia. There is a lot of ugly politics that occurred during the Stalin regime that led to the Russians claiming all three breeds as their own. And none of them would have anything to offer to someone looking for a friendly bird dog!
correct, that would be the South Russian Ovcharka a very different breed, but also a flock guardian breed.
as for the Caucasian Ovcharka, they were developed from the Central Asian Ovcharka’s hundreds years ago, if not more. Ovcharka just means sheep dog in Russian and is used in Russian language for a lot of flock guardian and herding breeds. i am stating this for people who think Ovcharka is some kind of a dog breed.
it is not. Central Asian shepherds and what is today known as the Tibetan mastiff are probably the oldest flock & village guardian breeds.
aboriginal Caucasian Ovcharka’s were/are found in Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, some parts of Russia and even in some parts of Turkey & Iran.
russia is seen as patronage to the modern Caucasian & Central Asian Ovcharka’s because they are the ones who developed these former landrace dogs into what is seen as a breed by our Western standards. so let us not trivialize the influence Russia has had on the development and the creating of a breed standard for these breeds.
That said some big Russian breeders are now doing a lot of damage to these two breeds
i agree with you I can’t believe someone actually used to think Golden’s originated from the Central Asian/Caucasian Ovcharka’s
The story varies all the time. Some say they came from the Crimea, others from the Caucasus, others from “Siberia.” Those are not near each other!
hello again.. the history of the caucasian ovcharka is well known and well documented in Russia. this breed however was almost non existent outside the Soviet republic + DDR up until the fall of the USSR .
The breed is now more prominent in the west, but there is a lot of hype and a lot of misinformation surrounding this breed on the internet.
it is true that the breed originates from the Caucasus, a region at the border of Europe and Asia, situated between the Black and the Caspian Seas. hence they are called Caucasian mountain dogs. it is there where the breed was developed from the Central Asian Ovcharka. the countries I named in my previous message are either in the Caucasus region or border with it.
That’s why you know the story is bogus.
When have Russian and Russian Empire periphery politics ever not been ugly?
Touche’.
One reason that the true story was so readily adopted was that (a) it is hard to argue with factual, authentic records such as the Guisachan book (b) the historians that revealed this, people such as Elma Stonex and 6th Lord Ilchester (son of the 5th who owned Ada from Nous x Belle) were known and respected as honest, impeccable sources. Both the GRCA and the GRC in the UK published the new findings and revised their official histories very quickly. Both are large and influential parent clubs.
I might add that even earlier, in the early 1920s, the writer Arthur Croxton Smith corrected himself on the “Russian circus dog” theory that he had been told by Col. Wm Le Poer Trench, after a conversation with 3rd Lord Tweedmouth on this subject. 3rd Lord Tweedmouth told ACS of his grandfather purchasing Nous, the yellow retriever, from a cobbler in Brighton who had gotten the young dog from a keeper on Lord Chichester’s estate.
On the other hand, Le Poer Trench, who so strongly advocated the Russian story, was known to be “economical with the truth”, as one who knew him commented.
As to a bloodhound cross, 6th Lord Ilchester did say that his father had done this cross once, in order to produce deer trackers. However, the dog they kept for this purpose, while a good tracker, was (in his words) “savage” and the cross was not pursued further. What this crossbred dog might have looked like, was not mentioned.
Correcting myself– went back to Ilchester’s original article: it was not his father the 5th Lord Ilchester that used the bloodhound cross, but apparently his father had known a dog from that cross.
It’s not often the truth gets in the way of a good old tall tale in dogdom.
In his book “Dogs and People” (1954) the Georgian-born author George Papashvily mentions his dogs, “golden trackers” (his term) named Basar, Juliko and Murka, “buried on the south slopes of the Caucasus”. Papashvily served in the Russian armed forces in WWI, emigrated to the USA, and earned some repute as both author and sculptor.
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