Ch. Noranby Diana and Noranby Jane.
The two dogs above were of the Noranby strain. The Noranby dogs were bred by Mrs. Winifred Charlesworth. Mrs. Charlesworth wrote the first standard for the breed in 1911, a year before the breed officially moved into its own studbook in the UK. This build and color are historically correct for the breed, although the current breed standards frown upon them.
Unlike white boxers, which are known to increase the liklihood of producing white puppies, there is no good reason why this color should be so distained these days. Further, I’ve read in several places (too many to cite) that the dark color is preferred in a working gundog. It’s easy to hide a dog that runs from tawny to mahogany in color in the reeds than one that is blond to almost white. (However, black Labs are often clad in their own camouflage vests to hide them).
Further, I have a photograph of the first dual champion of the breed, Dual Ch. Balcombe Boy, in Marcia Schlehr’s book. From the photograph, he is definitely a rather dark dog, and I will go as far as to call him a mahogany golden.
He looked rather like this dog:
Today, you’ll never see a dog like that in the ring. In the 1920’s and 1930’s, they almost had to be tawny or darker to actually do well in the ring. Virtually all show dogs were worked, and the golden retriever standard used on both sides of the Atlantic was intentionally vague to allow some diversity in type.
At that time, no one thought it was a good idea to load the dogs with bone and feathering and then breed for unsual colors. The golden was recognized as a working dog rather late in the fancy’s history. At that time, all sorts of different dogs had distorted through fad breeding for the ring. The English toy spaniel shifted from looking something like a phalene to having a very short face and heavy body. The bulldog stopped being a functional catch dog. The pekingese went from looking like a small Tibetan spaniel to looking like a very short-legged, heavily-coated toy bulldog. The fox terriers shifted from looking like what we would call Jack Russells into larger dogs with wedge-shaped heads.
Lots of breeds that once had a function were losing their ability in terms of behavior and conformation. I’m sure that some Old English sheepdogs can herd, but the originals looked a lot like a cross between a bearded collie and an Australian [sic] shepherd. The St. Bernard once looked rather like a Greater Swiss Mountain dog, just with a different coloration, and the Newfoundland looked a lot like a slightly larger version of the retrievers. By the second decade of the twentieth century, these dogs had clearly evolved away from their original working type. Now, OES’s can sometimes still herd, and Newfoundlands often want to retrieve from the water. It’s just now their current conformation is a hindrance to their abilities.
And that was the legacy of the fancy up until the point when the golden retriever joined it. It had originally been cast with the liver flat-coats, a distinction that meant that none of them would ever win anything at a dog show. They were then given their own color status in 1908– “Flat-coats (yellow).” However, they still couldn’t beat the black dogs in the show ring. So the three primary breeders of this type–Winifred Charlesworth, the 1st Viscount Harcourt, and the Earl of Shrewsbury– decided to create their own breed. Auxillary to their effors was William Le Poer Trench’s efforts to fabricate the story of the golden’s Russian origins, even showing his own goldens as “Russian retrievers” and allegedly going to the Caucasus and Siberia in search of new blood. Of course, Winifred Charlesworth locked onto that story, even if the members Marjoribanks family knew the full truth. It is with that story that the golden could be considered distinct from the flat-coat, even though everyone who had them was breeding them to the black dogs.
In retrospect, it was probably a very bad idea to separate the breeds according to color. Both breeds have issues with genetic diversity, and a balkanized gene pools is a very bad thing to have if you want to produce healthy dogs. However, the golden was saved from the steep population crash which befell the flat-coat in the years following the First World War. The reputation the flat-coat received in those years was not transmitted onto the golden, which, after all, was believed to be derived from a distinct Russian bloodline and not a flat-coat at all.
And even though we can consider the story quaint and silly now, we do know that the golden’s founders did not want their dogs turned into fancy dogs that had lost their utility. They ran their dogs as workers and then showed them, and the standard reflected utility and not caprice.
Yes, I would love to have dogs like these, even though they wouldn’t last five seconds in the show ring.
You would have been nuts about my golden retriever, Dudley. Very smart, eager to please, and mahogany. Looked very much like the dogs you have pictured. He was a stellar animal.
I just found your blog and have spent quite some time reading past posts. I have to confess that I was close to tears at a few points. For two years now, I’ve been amazed by my beautiful, smart, athletic retriever, Baxter. However, I’m keenly aware that he does not fit the breed standard, as defined by the breed registry. Still, I’m proud of my gorgeous pup, who retrieves like a champ, swims like a little fish, and runs his lean body around on long legs. Who needs a bear-like blockhead when you can have a spry, svelte athlete of a dog? :)
Anyway, in case you’re interested, here are some pictures of my little guy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeanninepc99/collections/72157601707830804/
I think I might have some of your videos in earlier posts.
He’s a wonderful dog.
My first golden tended to produce puppies that were even darker than she was, even when the stud was a bit lighter in color.
She was quite a working retriever. She was the most easily trained dog I ever had. She was like the retriever equivalent of a border collie. Intensely intelligent but very willing to take direction. She was every thing you’d want in a working retriever, but she was also everything you’d want in a good friend. When I lost her at age 13, I found it really hard to get over her loss. I still think she haunts some of my writing about these dogs, or maybe a better way to put it– her legacy continues with my work on this blog.
I had another from a show line that, while a nice dog, didn’t like to move. Her coat was all wrong, too. It was very long and so wavy that it it was nearly impossible to maintain. (Most show-line goldens lack the wavy-coats for that reason. In a working retriever with a shorter coat, a really wavy-coat will really shed the water and is nearly impossible for it to get bogged.) She also swam really heavy in the water, and she retrieved twice in her entire life. The only good thing about her was that she was a very gentle dog. She was also the mother of my golden boxer
When I went looking for another golden a few years ago, I found that the athletic working strain dogs with really dark colors were almost impossible to find. I had not previously studied the breed standard, but I did know that the historical dogs were often quite dark in color. Then I found out that the standard had been changed several times to ensure that goldens had a lot more bone and feathering and a lot lighter color than they were originally intend to have.
You really should look at the photos of the first breed champions and dual field champions in goldens, which were only recognized as a separate breed from the flat-coat in 1912 in the UK and the 1930’s in this country. They were very similar to your dog. The dog in my avatar is Ch. Noranby Diana, born in 1929, and she was part of one of the founding strains of the golden pedigree. Her owner was Winifred Charlesworth, who, I argue, is actually the real creator of the breed. The 1st Baron Tweedmouth wanted to create a strain of wavy or flat-coated retriever that was yellow or red in color, instead of the more common black color. She actually wrote the first standard.
I actually had someone tell me that “My Aunt’s dog won BOB at Cruft’s, so do you know more than the golden retriever judge?” When I was complaining about the coareness and very pale color of a dog on youtube. I am infamous on that video, because the person who posted that video said the dog was “white”– which they aren’t. They are just very pale cream. I simply said that the original standard preferred a darker colored animal, and that this standard was written in real world conditions, not the caprices and whims of the show ring.