Canis lupus hominis

The golden retriever never would have been established in this country but for the existence and persistence of the ring-necked pheasant in the Upper Midwest.

Neither the golden nor the pheasant is native to this continent, but both came to thrive in this land of prairies and cornfields.

The region to which I’m referring runs from roughly northern Illinois and much of Wisconsin west to the Dakotas.

The golden is essentially a British dog. It is derived from the old wavy and flat-coated retriever breed, which was quite popular in retriever trials and battue shoots in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These trials had the dogs retrieve mostly land based game– the most prominent of which was the pheasant.

The common or ring-necked pheasant is not actually native to Britain either. It has a vast range in Asia, and the only native European population is found in the Caucasus. The Greeks knew this bird from their interventions in that region, but it was the Romans who transplanted them throughout Europe.

In Britain, many pheasants are kept solely for shooting purposes. In the old days, the gamekeeper killed raptors and foxes to allow for larger numbers of stocked pheasants to live on the land. Poaching pheasants on a landowner’s property was a serious crime, and many people transported to Australia or who sent to the American colonies as indentured servants in an earlier epoch, were people convicted of poaching pheasants and other game on the estates.  Even today, there exists a large pheasant farming industry in Britain. The birds are raised solely to be stocked for shooting purposes. They are meant to live wild and free for a little while, but their real purpose is to be living skeet for the shotguns.

It just so happened that much of the Upper Midwest is excellent pheasant habitat, and when the birds were stocked there, they multiplied rapidly. In this one part of the world, something like the same conditions as the British battue shoot happened to develop on its own.

And to work the pheasants, a British pheasant retriever would have been useful.

That is why the golden got established in the Midwest first. The conditions and the quarry were suitable for its natural tendencies. From the 1930’s through the 1950’s, the epicenter of the American golden retriever would be in this region.

This is not to say that goldens of this day were never of any use in hunting waterfowl. Waterfowling is the main activity for which North Americans use retrievers, and in the water, the short, dense “slick” coats of the Labrador and the Chesapeake do have a bit more utility over the feathered dog. The feathering tends to weight the dog down a bit, and there is always a little problem with ice forming in the fur. That is the main reason why the people of Newfoundland selected their native water dogs to be smooth-coated and sent the feathered puppies abroad. However, goldens can still do waterfowl hunting– and do it quite well.

But their real utility is in pursuit of pheasants and other land-based game birds that tend to run and seek cover when they are wounded.  The British have always selected their retrievers to have good nose, and the golden retains that inheritance– perhaps more so than the other breeds. When sent after a wounded pheasant, a dog with a good nose is of great use.

With the Upper Midwest becoming such good pheasant habitat and with pheasant hunting in that region becoming such an important activity, the golden found a home there.

The indigenous American lines of golden were primarily used on this game. They were essentially pheasant, partridge, pigeon, hare, and rabbit retrievers in their homeland, and they adapted those skills to working in the Midwest.

The problem the working golden has is that it must compete with the Labrador. The North American Labrador has evolved very nicely to be solely a duck dog, and it has also evolved very nicely to fit our concept of trials and tests.

And the very British golden is caught flat-footed.

It’s not that goldens can’t do the same work as Labradors. They just do it differently.

It’s not that goldens can’t work both waterfowl and pheasants.  It’s that they do so with a different set of talents than the current American Labrador possesses.

The working-type golden has good characteristics, but they are not Labradors.  Goldens tend to be much softer than Labs  and may not respond as nicely to traditional training methods. They may resent harsher methods and go on strike. They are union dogs. They will gladly do what is asked, but don’t mess with them.

The British shoot required a very different dog for the American duck hunt. One should understand the golden is a dog that evolved with the pheasant in mind, not the mallard.

If one does, one can see how to use this dog’s talent to hunt both waterfowl and game birds.

They are not long-haired yellow Labs. They are something quite different.

Differences do not equal inferiority. They only become inferiority when we refuse to step back and look at the dog as a whole and think about why this breed has developed the way that it has.

Many of these differences– such as the golden’s excellent nose– are something that evolved for a different time and place. But they can still be useful in modern situations.

They just have to be appreciated for what they are.