Here is a description of several types of retrievers in The National Geographic Society’s The Book of Dogs: An Intimate Study of Mankind’s Best Friend:
Many breeds of dogs have been trained to find and bring in game which has been shot, but retrievers, as their name implies, are bred specially for that purpose. English sportsmen had for some time been experimenting with different breeds in an effort to find a dog exactly suited for retrieving game, when, about the middle of the last century, there was introduced from Labrador a hardy, black-coated, small-eared, medium-sized dog, which seemed to answer the purpose. He was a typical water dog and not subject to ear canker, which so often develops in spaniels used to retrieve waterfowl. [This is a description of the St. John’s water dog from Newfoundland.]
This Labrador dog [St. John’s water dog], crossed probably with the English setter, and perhaps with other breeds, produced the retriever, which may be either black or liver brown.
In size about like a pointer, covered all over with a coat of tight, curly hair, Astrakhan-like, except for his smooth head and face, he is a curious-looking dog. He is a capable and teachable creature, however, and makes a capital assistant in the duck-blind or as a gun-dog, where birds are the quarry.
The curly retriever may be either coal black or dark liver brown. He should weigh about 65 to 80 pounds.
There is also a smooth [flat-coated] retriever, which is much like the curly in form and size, but has straight hair.
The Labrador retrieve is shorter of leg than the other types and generally more solidly built. It is generally some shade of brown [incorrect, as you already know], and none of the retrievers should show more than a trace of white on the chest. All have smaller ears than the pointer or setter, and the curly type carries his close to the head.
The original “Labrador,” or something very like, still exists under the same name, as a distinct and recognized breed. He has all the good qualities of both of these highly intelligent parents.
Some of this language is confusing.
You’ll note that golden retrievers were not mentioned, even though they were a distinct breed from the flat-coat in 1919. They simply were not well-known outside of Britain or Canada.
The text also plays loose with the terms “Labrador dog” (meaning St. John’s water dog) and the Labrador retriever.
The St. John’s water dog existed until at least the late 70’s. It looked very much like a Labrador, but it had white markings on its chest. It was almost always black, but liver forms did occur.
My own view is that it was derived from poodle-type water dogs from Iberia, France, and the British Isles that evolved a more otter-like coat through cross-breeding with Portuguese mastiffs (possibly the Cao de Castro Laboreiro), various curs and collie-types, spaniels, setters, possibly pointers and Native American dogs, including the canoe dogs and the Labrador husky.
Natural selection would have demanded for a smooth coated dog that could withstand very cold water helped the breed evolve its coat, which is now one of the Labrador’s most distinguishing features. Very shaggy dogs would not be able to swim as fast to keep up with the fishing boats or retrieve lines or nets in a very efficient manner.
From the depictions I’ve seen, at least some of the earlier St. John’s water dogs were feathered. These dogs were probably always a liability, and because smooth-coated dogs can have feathered offspring, it was likely that dogs of this coat type popped up time and again. These puppies were then sold off to England, where they could be a ship’s mascot or work as retrievers on estates.
And that would explain why the wavy-coated retriever (the ancestor of the golden and flat-coat) was so common in England. The feathered form of the St. John’s water dog crossed with setters and some collie-type shepherds would have created a dog very similar to a wavy-coated retriever.
I don’t know where the authors get the notion that the Labrador retriever was always some shade of brown. That sounds more like a flight of fancy to me.
The Labrador (as in the dogs descended from the Buccleuch line) was not a very common breed at this time, which sounds bizarre to us. The Lab is the most common purebred dog in this country. Everyone has an idea what it is.
But it’s very likely the authors had never seen one. The most common color in Labradors is and always has been black. White markings from its Newfoundland ancestor still pop up time and again, but in those days, black was the color for the Labrador.
However, the text does get the curly and of the black and liver wavy-coats pretty close to accurate. One must remember that these were the only two recognized forms of retriever for many decades. They were the first two forms that were recognized by the Kennel Club.
The wavy-coated form became recognized early on in the British trial circuit, and it was heavily promoted by the founding president of the Kennel Club, Sewallis Shirley.
As a result of this prominence, if you were to ask someone in the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries what a retriever was, they would explain that it was a black dog with long hair that was about the size of a pointer or setter.
Today, we think all retrievers are Labradors or goldens.
If I say something like “Nova Scotia duck-tolling retriever,” I get looks as if we have made something up.
And to mention the Norfolk retriever is even more confusing. No can say what that breed was, and all we know about now is that it is extinct. My view is that it was a derivative of the English water spaniel crossed with a St. John’s water dog.
But the truth is we just don’t know.
And no, it was not a Norfolk spaniel. That was breed that got absorbed into the English springer spaniel. There is some evidence that the Norfolk spaniel actually was developed in Shropshire, which is nowhere near Norfolk.
The Norfolk retriever worked the Norfolk Brecks and marshes.
It existed until at least the First World War, but the breed didn’t even make National Geographic’s book on dogs from that time period.
Retriever history is actually among the easiest of dog histories to explore. The dogs were almost universally owned by nobles, and their pedigrees were often well-kept.
But even at that, it is very easy to get confused. Labrador and Newfoundland mean different dogs for different authors. Retriever can also mean water spaniel, and water spaniel can also mean English rough water dog, which was a poodle-type water dog.
I barely can touch the nuances of such things in a single post on this blog, and I am sure that the National Geographic Society’s authors could barely grasp this in their encyclopedic book on dogs.
It is that deep. It is that confusing.
But that’s why I love it so much.
“But it’s very likely the authors had never seen one” [Labrador].
Quite so! The Book of Dogs was printed in 1919 and as late as 1931 there were only 40 registered Labradors in US… ;)
The background of the retrievers is quite complex, for several reasons.
“Retriever” in the sense we think of it is a fairly new job description for dogs, as it was the invention of the breech-loading shotgun that made it possible to shoot flying birds. Previously, game birds were either netted, killed with hawks/falcons, or shot on the ground or while roosting in trees, and retriever dogs simply weren’t needed. (Servants often served that purpose).
Early on, a retriever dog was anything that could do the job. Even terriers have been reported. But certain types soon proved more able than others, and over a century and a half of selective breeding, we now have our modern retrievers.
I read somewhere that poodle-type water dogs were needed but in a different capacity. They retrieved nets and arrows, not shot game.
Most likely you read about it here (on in reference provided therein). http://www.poodlehistory.org/PDUCKGU.HTM
another common feature of the st john’s was white toes.
now, I’d argue that st john’s wasn’t a breed as much as a landrace. I also suspect if you’d head out to the boonies of canada you’d be able to turn up a few specimines, even if they are half breeds.
i’d also ague against using the term extinct if ancestors lived on, even if those ancestors aren’t exactly the same in outer appearance. The term is just doesn’t fit well with modern breeding. If we call the St John’s extinct, do we call the dachshund extinct, because the modern dog is quite different from the same breed of 100 years ago when they had decent legs, if still short? ( http://caninecoalition.com/img/Dachshund–3.jpg )
I do think if you have any living descendants* you can recreate the breed. Use the labs that show white mark tendencies, plus any 1/2 or 1/4 dog you’d find on the upper northeast Canadian coast .
* you can recreate a breed as long as it’s descendants are living, carrying on it’s genes. This is entirely different than recreating a species by breeding a similar species to look like it. No way you can breed long haired elephants until you have a mammoth. But, if by some miracle you’d find some small population of elephants that had interbred with the last of the mammoths, that would be something else entirely.