A few years ago, I did a blog post about a wetterhoun/golden retriever cross.
A wetterhoun, as you may recall, is a water dog from the Friesland province of the Netherlands. The dog was used to hunt otters and polecats, as well as being used as waterfowl retrievers. In function, they are very similar to the market hunter’s water spaniels or water dogs that were once common across the North Sea from Norfolk to the River Tweed.
The owner of the above dog commented on my post leaving this photo of the dog in profile. The dog is much more retrievery in conformation than wetterhounesque. (I always wanted to use wetterhoun and -esque in a word).
Apparently, someone has bred this cross back into golden retrievers, because here is a dog that is 3/4 golden retriever and 1/4 wetterhoun.
The backcross is even more like a golden retriever. Indeed, if this same dog were seen in, say, 1890, we’d have to call it a wavy-coated retriever.
I don’t know how common crossbreeding is in wetterhouns, but this is still very much a working breed in its native region in the Netherlands. There has historically been a lot of crossbreeding between wetterhouns and the other Frisian gun dog breed, the Stabyhoun. I had heard rumors that crossbreeding between stabyhoun and wetterhoun were again happening, though on a much more limited scale, but I cannot find any record of it.
If the dog in the last photo had been selected to be gold or yellow in color, I don’t think you could tell it from a purebred golden retriever.
So these two breeds, though similar in function and perhaps ancestry, could be used in a backcross program without many problems.
It’s just that in the dog world that exists right now, we don’t have the ability to do this with legitimacy.
This has to change.
That third photo is an outstanding dog. Whatever breed or not-breed it may be. Lovely construction, balance,strop oration for a retriever. I wonder what the texture of the coat is?
“Strop oration”?? Otto Kerreckt has invented a new term. Wish I knew what it is supposed to mean. :-/
Gorgeous!
Breed what you need, and never mind registration. Look at the dog sports world – the best flyball and agility dogs are (mostly) border collie crosses, border/whippets, border/jacks, some mixes of several breeds. Good breeders are doing this with care, using health tested, superior specimens. The AKC is not all there is. When you have a need, fill it, don’t be misled by purists.
You might want to see this
http://carnivoraforum.com/topic/10265985/1/#new
You could kind of see this coming when the Fish and Wildlife Service antagonized coyote hunters with their ban on coyote hunting in red wolf range. I don’t think it will go very far, though. All the attempts to delist wolves in other areas have been a legal snarl.