I have never seen a golden retriever like this one. It is totally out of the standard, and totally beyond any working-type dog I’ve ever seen.
But the source for this photo says this dog was DNA-tested to be a golden retriever.
I have never seen a purebred golden that looks like this one.
Goldens vary a lot in appearance, and it might be possible to get a dog like this.
It might be, but I question whether it is likely.
The cocking up one of the forelegs while in a recumbent position is a definite golden retriever trait. It’s one of the breed traits. I’ve never seen another breed do this behavior as often as goldens do.
(Now who sounds like the breedist myth-maker? LOL.)
I have owned a golden that was really similar to that one. She was borned from 2 pure bred goldens, no doubt about that. As strange as it may sound, we call those “off standard” looking goldens as being “regional”. This occures when the breeding stock in a certain area is limited so this kind of “popup” happens (breeding poor looking dogs between each others brings slight changes in the look like that one). Their bone structure is oftenly smaller than it shoud be, ears are smaller and the head shape is more thin.
Field line dogs often have different heads from show line dogs, but this one almost reminds me of a chow/golden cross:
That one probably is a chow cross. No purebred Golden will have ears like that.
The one in the post?
The one on the link in your comment just above mine, marked 6:58 pm., looks like a chow cross. No purebred Golden will have prick (erect) ears. The coat texture and tiny eyes are also chow characteristics rather than Golden.
Sometimes, you just end up with a really weird-looking dog. One of my halfghans looks like he’s got Borzoi in him. The genes just combined strangely.
I think a more likely source for the silver Labrador is the Chesapeake, which occasionally comes in an “ash” color, which is genetically the same diluted liver.
It did not come from the Norwegian elkhound crossed into Labs, which was added to give them thicker coats. The lemon foxhound was used to increase the number of yellows in the Labrador bloodline, which is why you sometimes see Labradors with foxhound features.
The so-called “silver” Labradors in our area at least are almost certainly the result of a Weimaraner infusion. “That ‘Weimer’ from down the block kept jumping the fence, so we’re boarding her here until she’s out of season…”
Afghans will do the leg thing. With both legs. Kali does it all the time. Some of the other halfghans will habitually cross the front legs, something their Saluki sire did as well.
That dog is grossly fat.
Your critique is vague, at least.
What about this dog is out of breed standard? Given that we’re looking a a photo of a (possibly) overweight dog, ungroomed, lying in a curled position.
Is the dog out of standard because of head type? That’s the only clear view this photo offers.
Many dogs curl their forelegs when resting. Just about every breed I’ve owned or dealt with has exhibited this behavior.
The head is way off.
More like a Chow/golden retriever cross’s head.
The ear set is very different.
And muzzle is just very off.
Only goldens in my experience.
No beagles or elkhounds I’ve known have done this behavior.
http://goobertestsite.net/gallery2/4879/CharlieBrown1.jpg?g2_serialNumber=2
Chow/golden cross.
That’s what it looks like.
Huge difference between the photo of the chow/golden cross and the original photo. Look at the width of the back-skull of the two dogs, and how far out the ears project from the skull in the two photos.
Look at the difference of tapering from head to cheek to muzzle between the two dogs.
Draw a line across the top of the head of the chow cross, and compare it to a similar line on the “GR” dog. Look at the placement of ear set & carriage.
The example dog might be a mix (I have guarded confidence in dna test that are offered in a wide variety of on-line apparel and sporting goods sites), but I’ve seen other bad examples of golden retrievers that are clearly pure-bred..
Actually, the head and ears vary on chow crosses; not all chows are show quality.
The one with drop ears is closer to this dog.
Oi. That dog is fat, too.
The dog in the main photo is almost certainly a Golden, vastly overweight, and neutered or spayed (likely at a young age). The long, soft, fluffy “spay coat” is common in many lines of Goldens. As to head shape/type, there are plenty of Goldens of that sort. (and I’ve seen an awful lot of Goldens).
Just looks like a fat, ungroomed, and poorly bred Golden Retriever to me. If you keep breeding purebred, but not to standard dogs together, you’re only going to end up with ugly purebreds.
My English Cocker lies with his legs like that all the time.
I’m used to field line dogs, which aren’t to standard. They don’t look like that.
I guess I don’t see the culls from show breeding programs. Not only is that dog not to standard, it has terrible working conformation, in addition to being fat.
There are not only “field” and “show” lines of Goldens — there is a huge reservoir of “pet” Goldens who have generations of fairly random (although probably purebred) breeding behind them. The breed, as a whole, includes a considerable range of variation.
As to field-type Goldens being “not to Standard”, well, that depends on which ones you might have seen. There are still many well-built, good-looking, Standard-type Goldens who do good work in the field.
I’d say the majority of them are way out of the standard. They vary so much. I’ve seen them go from 35 pounds to 90 pounds. You very rarely see giants in those lines.
This is the strangest looking golden, that I know is a golden, I’ve ever seen. The Russian yellows were bred by Col. William le Poer Trench and were promoted as a separate breed from other yellow flat-coats, even though they had the same ancestors.
It is from that fellow that we get the crazy story about goldens being derived from Russian circus dogs.
That is one of the St Huberts “Russian yellow retrievers”, bred by Col Trench from his St. Huberts Rock and St Huberts May, both of which were registered as Russian Yellow Retrievers. Col. Trench never called his dogs Golden Retrievers.
Rock and May were of unrecorded ancestry, even though Col Trench was quoted as saying that they came from Scotland. Judging from their photographs, neither was of straight Flat-coat (or wavy-coat) ancestry. Several Golden historians suspect a considerable amount of something of the mountain-type such as what is now called Maremma/Kuvasz/Tatra/Pyrenees Mountain dog…. It is not impossible that there was a modicum of truth in the “foreign connection”.
Belgian Sheepdog with the leg curled under:
http://www.5stardog.com/dog-breeds-belgian-sheepdog.asp
A Google image search will show you a GSD in a similar pose on page 6.
I think it’s just that most dogs aren’t photographed in that position.
No opinion on the Golden being purebred. I don’t know the breed well enough.
Peggy Richter.
That’s a very typical Golden out of the older show bloodlines, in particular Cragmount and Golden Pine (which were in fact founded on 1940s fieldtrial blood, but had less of the setter influence than we see in today’s fieldbred Goldens). Seen standing up and when not overweight, they’re actually quite nice typey dogs. Many were good workers. These were also the dogs that gave the Golden its popular reputation for good temperament.
The black tongue was not all that uncommon in the old show lines either.
But according to Golden breeders from the 1950s and before, there WAS a chow crossed into Goldens (along with a Collie) back in the early days. So the occasional black tongue should surprise no one… if they actually know their breed history.
The ability to curl the leg under like that is a function of having long shoulder bones and a flexible pastern. It’s not breed-specific, tho some breeds seldom or never have that type of front.
As to the “Russian circus dogs” thing… in the 1800s and up until public stud books became the rule (post-1930), dog breeding was often treated like a trade secret. People with their own strain (what we’d now call a breed) often didn’t want anyone outside their own circle to know how they’d achieved some desired type. Many whoppers were told (and duly recorded in authoritative books of the period) to throw rivals off-track, and this was one of ‘em.
The black tongue in goldens isn’t inherited. I know this because I’ve see litter born to dogs with black tongues.
The Guisachan book was opened by Lord Tweedmouth’s great nephew, the 6th Earl of Ilchester.
I have seen the Craigmar dogs, and they don’t look like this.
Cragmount and Craigmar are completely different…one was a show line on the East Coast (with some old field lines in the background), the other a field line on the West Coast (which produced one of the Dual Champion goldens).
http://www.chowwelfare.com/cciw/blacktongue.htm
The chow rumor I heard of comes from Labrador people who generally don’t like golden retrievers– and claim that’s why certain lines get very aggressive. The chow is about the last breed anyone who seriously considers what a golden retriever should be would ever want to cross into the dogs. Chows are the anti-golden retriever.
It is much better documented that Labs have Norwegian elkhound and foxhound crossed into them. It is also often speculated that Labradors have Rottweiler in them, which is one reason why giant Labradors with very block heads started to turn up.
http://www.woodhavenlabs.com/tonguespots.html
I guess these Labs are part chow.
I’m not buying this. There may be a tiny bit of chow in goldens, but their black spots on their tongues don’t come from that breed.
The circus dog myth is the only one of these bogus creation stories ever to be full debunked and then accepted by the breed clubs at large.
Chinese crested dogs have had their creation myth debunked thoroughly, but their breed clubs refuse to accept the reality of it.
They hold onto these old stories for some strange reason. Perhaps if they let them go, their dogs just won’t be all that special.
Several of my dogs have black spots on their tongues. They were not born with them, they develop as they get older. Their sire also had a black spot on his tongue.
I wonder what were the desired traits that breeders wanted to implant from the Chow into the golden… Chow are “live stocks”. Physically and mentally, those dogs have nothing to improve the golden.
There are many things that are said about certain breeds that rest on “popular belief”. Many can’t be proven, some others like breeding Weimarer into the lab to get that new grey color and Visla for the “red fox” color are actually questioned but only few beliefs are verified. I understand that there has been some breeders that have not bred right strains together but I don’t see why they would breed one type of dog with an other if there is no improvement that can be observed.
The incertion of Visla or Weimarer in labs, even if it’s not recorded, I can buy the idea because there are traits that can improve the breed (not only for color) and all those breeds have a certain “common general shape” between them which would help to stay with the same overall shape.
Chows are meant to be mass-produced for food and fur.
Not to be a working dog that takes direction.
Plus, they typically bond with just a few people. I don’t think many of them like to swim, and if they did, the rough-coated ones have so much coat that it would bog them down. And they have those weird straight hindquarters that are the antithesis of proper retriever conformation.
Black spots in goldens and Labs are little bits of pigment that are not inherited. They are born with those spots on the tongue. Chows are born with pink tongues that turn black.
There’s now a DNA test that proves a dog belongs to a specific breed?
That claim to be.
There are several of them.
They all say the use particular markers– but they won’t say what they are.
I’ve seen dogs that turn up as mixes that they can’t possibly be– like a brown and white Labrador/Doberman cross.
This is quite a long answer, interesting to read ! If I said something about the labradors, it’s just in the same track as the popular beliefs I was talking about. I am personally not interested about labs so I will not argue on the origins of the breed’s influences. Now, assuming that some points of view of some people relie on readings and limited knowledge to modern goldens, you may be right. Fortunately, there are some that have met breeders that thie history in the breed goes back to Lord Tweedmouth himself. We come to meet some very interesting people in our lives (you sure know about that).
May be there were a couple strains in which Chows have been introduced in (but this has never been proven out of any doubts). Fortunately, some other strains we kept in the original sequence. In a close look of the golden’s different lines, I believe we all observe how close the field type goldens in modern history are very alike the ones found 100 years ago. So the question is, if there were strains corrupted with Chows, which one are they ?
Silver labs could not have gotten their color from Elkhounds. Silver labs are dilutes, d locus, which can dilute both black and brown, and is a simple recessive. Elkhounds are wild type agouti, aw. Not the same gene.
I think their color comes from Chesapeakes or perhaps some dilutes that were in the last St. John’s water dogs that were crossed in in the 1940’s.
My Irish Water Spaniel dog curls his forelegs under. The bitch doesn’t.
I do find it ok, my Golden Retriever does that too, your fine :)