- Mr. Shirley was responsible for founding both the Kennel Club and the flat-coated retriever.
In favor of explaining the development of the golden retriever as a distinct form, I have left out a little history that Flat-coat people know well but golden people seem to ignore. I am a golden owner, so my perspective is that of a golden owner trying to understand its history. However, I have always pointed out that we must know the history of both breeds. Remember, the history of both breeds is very close, simply because the golden was a color variety of flat-coat or wavy-coat through most of its development.
In this case, I am talking about the role of Sewallis Evelyn Shirley and his founding of both the Kennel Club and the flat-coated retriever. Mr. Shirley was a member of parliament who had always hunted with wavy-coated retrievers. At the time the wavy-coat was the most common type of retriever, and it differed from the flat-coat and golden in that it was generally a heavier dog with a coat that was almost always long and wavy. It was recognized as separate variety in the early retriever club in 1864 (four years before Nous was born), and the wavy-coated dogs began to dominate the early trial circuit. They were also shown in what were loose and informal dog shows for gundogs. Dogs were shown in arbitrary classes, and the main role for the retriever was to be a working animal that was to be trialed.
Two early wavy-coat champions were Old Bounce and Young Bounce, which belong to a gamekeeper named Mr. Hull, and their descendants were the cornerstone of most wavy-coated strains. His breeding program used dogs that were descended from the two Bounces. He began to breed out the wave in his dogs’ coats. The early standard for the allowed for black and liver. Liver dogs included those dogs from the Tweedmouth strain, even though today we wouldn’t technically consider those dogs to be liver. His main interest was to standardize the wavy-coated variety into the flat-coated breed.
He was also the founding president of the Kennel Club, the world’s oldest all breed registry, and the early flat-coats were among the first breeds to be shown in all breed shows. This organization was founed in 1873, merely nine years after the wavy-coated retriever was recognized as a separate variety of retriever.
Mr. Shirley was also the owner of Zelstone, a dog that was probably a purebred St. John’s water dog but was registered as a flat-coat or a wavy-coat. Zelstone also appears as an outcross stude in Guisachan kennel records. He actually looks like a black golden retriever of the show type, and George Teasdale Teasdale-Buckell, another early fancier of the breed, considered his contribution to retrievers to be negative. His offspring developed coarseness and lumber that Mr. Teasdale-Buckell thought actually destroyed the flat-coat as a working dog. (It is currently what is destroying the golden as a working dog).
The wavy-coated/flat-coated breed began to standardize around this evolving fancy that was trying to match working abilities with clear conformation standards based on working ability. By 1890’s, the wavy-coat became the flat-coat as we know it today. One of Teasdale-Buckell’s bitches, Jenny, had a narrower had than normally seen in the wavy-coat, and her progeny had a great deal of influence on the breed. (She probably had an influence on the goldens as well, because I had wonderfully biddable golden with a narrow head. She would’ve been a perfect flat-coat except she was tawny with a white tail tip.)
By beginning of the twentieth century, the more lithe dogs were perfect workers, and they totally dominated the working trials of this period. These changes in the breed began to affect the Tweedmouth strain, too, although heavy dogs could still be found, largely because of Zelstone’s influence in the strain.
In 1908, the yellow flat-coat or wavy coat was separated from the liver coloration. The early goldens of this time period look almost identical to flat-coats, except for color. After all, they were varieties of the same breed.
- Culham Brass (1904). Breeding for more lightly-built dogs in flat-coats affected the Tweedmouth strain, too.
Again, we see how interwoven the history of golden and flat-coated retrievers really is.
Interesting to note: Flatcoats still (rarely) turn up in yellow:
Yes, and I’ve found two sources for the yellow coloration in flat-coats.
One is Don of Gerwn, a dog that was described as “Sandy liver.” He won the International Retriever trial twice and was a much feted dog. He was used heavily as a stud. His dam was named Rust, a similarly colored dog. Her sire was a dog out of Lord Tweedmouth’s kennels. Both of these “livers” could have been very dark golds or golden reds.
The other source for the yellows in flat-coats is the golden retriever founding line called Culham, bred by Lord Harcourt. His dogs were always outcrossed to black wavy or flat-coats. Then, in 1911, his yellow or reddish dogs became part of the golden retriever founding studbook, and his black dogs became remained part of the flat-coat registry. The black dogs very easily could have carried the yellow color.
I am good friends with the photographer of those images. He has a golden retriever of European lines, along with three flat-coats. One is a yellow that looks like a golden of American field lines. I did have a video from youtube of a yellow flat-coat.
I have a good source on early flat-coat/golden history. It is called The Complete English Shot by George Teasdale Teasdale-Buckell. Don of Gerwn’s black and white photo is in the book, but it is hard to tell whether he is a true liver or a very dark gold. If he had been a liver, he could have carried the yellow gene.
A relatively contemporary yellow-carrying FCR that was used frequently was Eng/Irish Ch Shargleam Blackcap, who won Best in Show at Crufts in 1980.
You might be interested in reading “The History of Retrievers — Compiled from the scrapbooks of H. Reginald Cooke” by Judi Seall. Published in 2001, the book is a collection of extracts from Cooke’s scrapbooks from 1903 through 1941, plus additional material through 1951.
The yellow is indicative of having an ancestor that was bred with Lord Tweedmouth’s strain or another black or liver dog carrying that strain.