I know I’ve posted this before, but the goldens in this video are of the type I have been writing about.
The goldens are at 1:42 and 3:52.
Culham Brass (b. 1904) is an example of what early golden retriever breeders thought was functional conformation.
I was digging through some GRCA literature online, when I came across this document, which includes some analysis and commentary from early golden retriever people in the US, Canada, and Britain.
It seems that a poison seed always existed in the early days of the golden retriever as a standardized breed.
I don’t know how to describe this poison seed exactly, but the best I can come up with is the “Irish setter inferiority complex.” The early people in the breed hated that their dogs were mistaken for Irish setters, so they decided to breed away from the setter’s conformation.
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Now, one must not forget that wavy/flat-coated retrievers came in two basic types: the setter-type and the Newfoundland-type. A very good illustration is these two can be found in the illustration of two wavy-coats named Paris and Melody in Stonehenge’s Dogs of Great Britain, America, and Other Countries.
Then, as wavy-coats evolved into the top working retriever of their day, the Newfoundland-type was deemed inferior in the breed. Writing about the merits of the working flat-coat in The Complete English Shot (1907), George Teasdale-Buckell contended that the flat-coat is “open to regeneration when he is bred more wiry and less lumbering.” In other words, one should breed away from the Newfoundland-type.
Teasdale Buckell continues his critique of heavily-built, lumbering retrievers. He writs that the “the old dogs were lumbering, and so no doubt the Newfoundland type of wavy-coated dogs were” (187) and again criticizes his own selection of the Newfoundland-type wavy-coat stud named Zelstone, claiming that he was the worst cross he ever made (188).
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Now, this information on flat-coated retrievers is very nice, but what does it have to do with golden retrievers.
Well, golden retrievers actually started out as a strain of wavy-coated retriever and then became flat-coated retrievers. Their original breeder, Dudley Marjoribanks, 1st Baron Tweedmouth, bred these dogs with the best black wavy-coated retrievers he could find, including some of the top wavy/flat-coated dogs in the strain. He never intended to split this breed off because it was a different color.
Good working conformation for a flat-coated retriever is based upon a very simply axiom “Power without lumber and raciness without weediness.” It’s actually a very good axiom for breeding any strain of retriever.
However, if you are breeding golden retrievers with this conformation and they happen to be towards the darker end of the spectrum, they will look a lot like Irish setters.
This makes a lot of sense when you realize that the main outcross for flat-coated/wavy-coated retrievers was the setter. In fact, Idstone thought that the wavy-coated retriever was a specialized strain of black retrieving setter!
In the nineteenth century, a very common setter was the red setter. In the US, we call this breed an Irish setter, but red setters also occurred in the gordon setter breed (and still do).
Because wavy/flat-coated retrievers were almost always black dogs at this time, it was very common for a black retriever to carry the gene for red, as was the case with Moonstone.
After the Tweedmouth strain had been founded, it was augmented through outcrossing to black wavy/flat-coats that had setter ancestry. And as the setter type became preferred in flat-coat, it also affected the golden retriever (How could such a preference not?)
That’s why the Noranby goldens in the 1930’s looked like this:
Yes, these dogs do look like Irish setters.
To which I say, “So what?”
Flat-coats have obvious setter ancestry. It is celebrated in that breed.
It is condemned in the golden, even though this is what the efficient functional conformation is for a retriever that has some coat.
If you scan to page 3 of that GRCA document, a person named E.F. Rivinus contrives a whole rationale for breeding away from this functional type. Basically, he wants to breed to look so distinct from the setter that everyone will recognize that it is not one.
I find it interesting that Winifred Charlesworth, the founder of the golden retriever as a separate breed, wanted to breed for a different head in her dogs. She produced the Noranby dogs in the above photograph, and their heads are not radically different from a flat-coat. Of course, she was one of those people pushing the Russian origins poppycock, but you can obviously tell that her dogs are derived from flat-coats and red setters.
I can’t imagine a sillier rationale for coming up with a conformation standard.
In fact, it is a reversal of what British golden breeders were trying to breed for as the golden became distinct from the flat-coat. Because the golden had been an estate shooting dog, it had been one of the last strains of wavy-coat to develop the lighter strain. The Reverend Needham- Davies wrote the section on the golden in A.C. Smith’s Gun Dogs-Their Training, Working and Management. In that section, Needham-Davies contended that the golden was more like an old fashioned retriever, which he incorrectly suggested was the Newfoundland (it was actually the old-fashioned Newfoundland-type wavy-coat). He writes that the golden was being developed that could move with more speed, and it would eventually be able to compete with the best flat-coats and Labradors.
Of course, that was in the working gun dog sphere. In the show ring, breeding away from the lighter-built dog and the darker colored dog was the goal, while in the working gun dog sphere, breeding for lighter-built dogs was the main objective.
And even early on, you the beginnings of the split that has since happened in this breed.
One set wanted a dog that could move efficiently and with speed, while the other wanted a dog that didn’t look like an Irish setter.
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I’ve searched long and hard for the reason why the show-strain goldens developed as they did.
I can’t believe it was for such a silly reason as the lighter-built and darker dogs looked like Irish setters.
I’m sure stranger rationales exist for the conformation standards of many breeds, but I have not heard them yet.
What I am about to explain here might be offensive to curly-coated retriever owners. It is not intended to be.
I am merely quoting what Harding Cox, a retrieverman of the late nineteenth centuries and early twentieth centuries, thought of the breed. The breed has definitely changed since then, because it is no longer a “fancy” breed. It is now bred for sound working conformation and ability by its dedicated breeders.
Cox wrote the section on retrievers in W.D. Drury’s British Dogs: Their Points, Selection and Show Preparation (1903), and to be fair, Cox was a flat-coated retriever enthusiast.
He begins his section on retrievers with this somewhat Spencerian prediction:
That the Curly-coated Retriever is doomed to practical extinction is a notable and an undeniable fact, which must be put down to the inevitable law of the survival of the fittest…For every Curly-coated dog (speaking of the recognised show type) used in the field, or exhibited on the bench, there are now a score, at least, of Flat-coats. (333).
Whoa.
Cox explains that reason why the curly lost favor in the British gun dog circles did not have much to do with their lack of tractability or their supposed reputation for hardmouth.
Cox contends that the real reason why the curly was not favored at time is that it was thought of as a show dog, not a working dog:
There seems to be a prevailing impression that the average disposition of the Curly-coated Retriever…is not as sweet and benevolent as that of the more popular dog [the flat-coat], and that he is less tractable. The writer’s only experience of these animals is in the show-ring, and he confesses that he has always found the exhibits mild and friendly enough. Probably the real reason of their unpopularity lies in the fact that they are more or less a “fancy” breed (345).
In this analysis, the real reason why the curly lost favor in Britain is because it was a dog bred solely for the show ring.
After all, this breed does have an unusual feature that is difficult to breed. Their coats do not withstand any crossbreeding. If you breed a curly to Labrador, you will have a dog with short hair and some wave to it. At this time, though, crossbreeding different strains of retriever was a common practice, and thus, the curly missed out on some of the experimental breeding that goldens, Labradors, and flat-coats experienced.
If you’re breeding for that feature, you’re not breeding for working ability. You’re breeding for the coat and for the rosettes that this coat will win you.
And that’s a recipe for disaster for a working dog.
If all the competitor breeds are being cross-bred and selectively bred for work, and you are breeding for a peculiar physical feature, your dog will not be able to keep up with them.
And the curly nearly went into extinction as Harding Cox suggested.
Of course, the flat-coat didn’t remain top dog in the trial circuit. After the First World War, the Labrador, which had been developed from breeding recently imported St. John’s water dogs with flat-coats, Chesapeakes, and all sorts of other dogs (including pointers and foxhounds), began to come into its own. The flat-coat developed a bad reputation for being hard to handle and for having possible borzoi ancestry (sight hounds are known for being terrible retrievers.) The yellow version of flat-coat became a separate breed, and it became the secondary retriever to the Labrador.
Nearly becoming extinct actually proved to be a blessing for the curly, for now the only people who were breeding them were truly interested in producing the best possible dog. The modern curly is now a dog with good working conformation and retrieving instinct, but most people don’t know about it. If the average person sees one, I guarantee you that the first question will be “Is that a Labradoodle?”
Losing popularity isn’t such a bad thing.
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Today, the top working retriever is the Labrador. Most waterfowl hunters in North America go for Labradors.
In fact, the Labrador is now even more popular than its flat-coat predecessor. It is now the most common dog breed in the world.
The golden is the secondary dog. It is the curly of today.
However, this breed still remains common enough, although its popularity in Europe has started to drop off. In the US and Canada, it is still a very popular breed.
Most golden retrievers are rather like the curlies of the nineteenth century. They have been bred for their novel appearance alone. Working ability has been secondary.
And many working retriever people pass the golden over.
It is just a matter of time until the golden begins to really lose its status in our society.
When I first heard of them, they were touted as being very easily trained and very good natured.
A few years ago, they were touted as being very good natured and much calmer than Labradors. (This isn’t necessarily a good thing, because extremely calm dogs are on their way to losing their working ability.)
Now, their temperaments have become far less reliable than they once were.
As things have progressed, the golden is not thought of as a working retriever. It’s thought of as a fancy breed for yuppies to own.
All of these factors set the golden up for meeting a very similar fate that befell the curly in the early twentieth century.
Is this a bad thing?
Well, as I said before, losing a lot of popularity was a blessing for the curly. It allowed only the most dedicated people to breed them.
And with all the problems that the golden is facing, the only way to solve them is for the breed to lose some it of its popularity. Too many stupid people are breeding them.
If the demand for cute little golden retriever puppies would just drop, dedicated golden retriever people would be able to breed good dogs once again.
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It amazes me how many comments I get whenever I offer even a tepid criticism of a breed. I usually don’t attack individual dogs, but I do attack breeding practices. However, these criticisms are viewed as affronts against an individual dog, which may be sound, smart, and healthy.
I have nothing against the curly-coated retriever.
In fact, if you read this post and didn’t know any better, I bet you’d think I hate golden retrievers.
The truth is that I can offer a criticism of a breeding practice or trend within a gene pool and still respect the individual dog.
Every dog breed and every bloodline within a breed or strain has its virtues and vices. We need to be honest about them.
It’s only then that we can have real discussions about improving our dogs through selective breeding.
But because this candor eludes too many people who consider themselves dog people, we can’t have that conversation.
But for the sake of the dogs, we need to have that conversation.
It’s time to detach our egos from our dogs.
A golden, a Labrador/curly cross, and a liver curly eating blackberries:
I’ve never had a dog eat blackberries, even though they are very numerous on our property.
But I have had them eat watermelon!
