Very few goldens approach the setter's mahogany color, but some do.
A photo of one is here.
This is the darkest golden I’ve seen in many, many years.
They used to be relatively common. In fact, the first dual champion in the breed, Dual Ch. Balcombe Boy, was a mahogany.
In black and white photos, I have a hard time telling this color from the liver coloration.
Even in full color, it can be hard to discern, especially if you don’t know that any dog with a black nose and black lips isn’t a liver.
Liver flat-coat.
But it’s also possible for a mahogany with brown skin to exist, and that would make classifying color very difficult. This is why so many very dark red and mahogany-colored goldens were called livers, and I’m sure that the golden breed got a few liver flat-coats into the registry. These were bred out, though, when the standard’s desire for black skin pigment became an important requirement. It’s a good way to ensure that no more liver dogs in the registry.
And remember: crossing a homozygous liver with a recessive red to yellow with black skin will result in black puppies.
That’s a damned beautiful dog.
My childhood golden, Shannon, was not quite that dark, but she was a very dark copper.
A snobby local shopkeeper/show Irish setter fancier was once sniffing to my mother about the terrible undersized example of the breed she’d seen being walked by some little girl. My Mom about bust a gut — “Lady, that was my kid, and her golden retriever!”
Kind of took the wind out her sails as the resident cynological expert.
That would have been around 1976.
At that time, the golden was still a pretty uniformly good dog, and it was near-impossible to find a decent Irish setter with a brain.
Goldens have a lot of Irish setter in them. That’s why it’s so hard to tell whether a golden retriever that is red has Irish setter in its pedigree. It’s because they all do, even the “white ones.”
This fellow is a major breeder of show goldens, but even he’s figured it out: http://www.grca.org/history_breed/revisited.html
However, the saddle shading is mentioned in Marcia Schlehr’s book as something undesirable in the show-ring, but it did exist in goldens.
Oh — I see the link to the dark golden now.
I’d be suspicious of crossing. It’s a small photo and I’m viewing on a laptop screen, but I think I’m seeing a saddle pattern on that dog. I don’t think that’s a feature of the golden retriever genome.
Saddle patterns of darker hair were common in the old dogs. It used to be there. It still exists in red Labradors. http://www.littleriverlabs.com/foxred2.htm
The coat type says golden and not cross. A setter cross generally will have a coat more like a setter than a golden.
http://www.littleriverlabs.com/foxred3.htm Genetics of the “saddling effect.”
That’s a beautiful color. I wish it were more common. Couldn’t mistake those ears for Irish Setter ears, though. :O) My friends parents are Irish setter people and they have two, who both look VERY different from each other.
Here’s a picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/loriflower/3276784150/
This is a field bred Irish setter: http://www.dogfacts.org/red-setter-dog-pictures.htm
The dog in the post is a European show Irish setter. They have more moderate feathering, but not like the field red setter that’s bred in this country.
I am looking for a mahogany/blood red golden retriever puppy. We have always had very dark red golden retrievers. We just lost our ten year golden to cancer this last Sunday. Please contact us. Thank you.
I don’t know of anyone who is currently breeding for this color.
However, I have run across a few breeders of field line dogs that are incidentally of this very dark color.
I’d google field-line golden retriever breeders, and see if you can find someone who is producing dogs of this color.
It’s just not a popular color these days, and it’s likely that we’ll lose it.
Here’s a breeder you may want to contact:
http://www.redtail.com/retrievers/
Thank you so much. I have a photo of Mick on facebook. Is there a way to show you a photo?
He is the one to your left, the darker one.