I don’t have the date of this photo, but it would be in the late part of the nineteenth century or the very early part of the twentieth century. The photo is by a George Jaeger. If someone has any information about this photographer, I’d be quite interested.
This dog is definitely a retriever-like Newfoundland dog, which were common in the United States during the time period. When you read of “Newfoundlands” doing remarkable things in the nineteenth century, a lot of them were more like large wavy-coated retrievers than the giant Newfoundlands we see in the show ring:
Photo courtesy of Nara U.
This dog looks like a large black golden retriever, which just shows you how conservative we’ve actually been in choosing which dogs we have made popular. This retriever-crazed era is just simply history repeating itself. The retrievers, with the exception of the toller, are just modifications on these old Newfoundland dogs.
At the time, Newfoundlands were being challenged for popularity by St. Bernards, which traditionally looked more like Greater Swiss mountain dogs, and they were always popularly portrayed with a flask of brandy on their collars. This Newfoundland is wearing a decorative flask, which wealthy people would use to adorn their St. Bernards. I guess the owners thought their Newfoundland needed one for the photo!
See related posts:
- Teasing apart the history of the Newfoundland dog, the St. John’s water dog, and the retrievers
- The origin and evolution of the wavy-coated retriever
A completely different dog than the ones we have today.
That dog looks more like a modern Golden than it does like Lassie, the supposed last St Johns dog in Wolter’s Lab book. Might it be that Labs and goldens (generally-the full story may be much more complicated) descended from different types within the same landrace?
The fishermen of the Grand Banks sent all their rejects to Britain. The wavy and curly-coats you see are simply rejected dogs which didn’t do very well in the frigid water of the Atlantic.
Eventually over time, the only phenotype left in the native sock was short, smooth-haired.
So Labradors are descended from the ‘keeps’ and goldies from the culls? Then how did Labrador progenitors get to the UK? Were the dogs the 2nd Earl of Malmsbury imported from the ‘keep’, rather than the ‘cull’ stock?
Fishing industry declined, and people began urbanizing.
Labradors are descended from keepers for Newfoundlanders. Golden retrievers were descended from earlier exports, which were less efficient in the water.
Opportunistic Newfoundlanders would sell whatever dogs the gentry paid for. And even today, the occasional long-coat pops up from smooth parents. (See prior post in this blog about long-haired Labradors.).
The reason why they were called St. John’s water dogs in the first place is they were sold by merchants at St. John’s to fishing boats. The landrace dog was still common in the outports.
The dog’s eyes look weird in this photo– sort of a Stephen King effect?
Beautiful dog. I actually had a retriever like Newfoundland. Still a very large dog,but had more of a retriever like head and had a high prey drive towards water fowl.
Sense he was from unknown breeding he could have had mixed blood though.
http://s708.photobucket.com/user/wired-rottie/media/the_proud_newfie_.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0
http://s708.photobucket.com/user/wired-rottie/media/RIP2000-2013.jpg.html
young lady’s feet barely larger than her dog’s!
Some suggestions that Newfoundlands as we now know the large breed were essentially a product of European breeding in the sense of the imports were bulked up in head and substance by crossing in the heaver dogs of Europe
And in St. John’s too, where there were store owners willing to sell English and American people anything.
Absolutely love your blog – I am a Labrador person – please just keep your stuff coming.