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The breed
originated from a series of matings carried out by Lord
Tweedmouth from 1864 onwards. The starting point was his
acquisition of a good looking yellow coloured Flat Coated
Retriever which he took to his estate at Guisechan, near
Inverness in Scotland. He mated this dog to a Tweed Water
Spaniel, a breed now long extinct, and then bred on from the
offspring of this mating using the occasional outcross to an
Irish Setter, a second Tweed Water Spaniel and a black Flat
Coated Retriever. The dogs produced proved to be grand workers,
biddable and attractive. Puppies from the matings were given to
friends and family, notably his nephew, Lord Ilchester, who also
bred them. The dogs bred true to type, and so the forerunners of
the breed we know today were established.
t was not until
1908 that the breed came into the public eye. Lord Harcourt had
formed a great liking for the breed, and had gathered on to his
estate at Nuneham Park, Oxford, a collection of the dogs
descended from the original matings. He decided to exhibit them
at the Kennel Club Show in 1908, where they created great
interest. They were entered in a class for Any Variety
Retriever, and described as Yellow Flatcoated Retrievers. The
term 'Golden Retriever' was first coined around this time, and
has been attributed to Lord Harcourt.
Once they had
been seen by the general public, there were many people that
wanted to own one for them selves, and the breeds popularity was
assured. One of the people that saw them and acquired one for
herself was Mrs Charlesworth, who became the greatest enthusiast
the breed has ever had. From 1910 when she acquired her first
Golden, until her death in 1954, she championed the cause of the
breed against allcomers, and nagged her fellow enthusiasts
remorselessly to keep the breed as a true dual purpose dog. She,
it was who organised her fellow enthusiasts into forming a
Golden Retriever Club in 1911, writing a breed standard, and
campaigning for the breed to be registered with the Kennel Club
as a separate breed. (The Kennel Club had previously registered
them as Flatcoated Retrievers). The breed was accepted by the
Kennel Club in 1913, and an allocation of Challenge Certificates
was made the same year. The race had already been on to see who
could win the first Field Trial award with a Golden, and the
honour had fallen in 1912 to Captain Hardy with his bitch Vixie,
who went on to become an influential dam in the breed. The
honour of winning the first C.C.'s on offer proved to be an
anti-climax.
One enthusiast,
Col Le Poer Trench, insisted that the Golden had developed from
a breed found in Russia, and had persuaded the Kennel Club to
register his dogs as Yellow Russian Retrievers. At Crufts Dog
show in 1913, there were classes for Goldens and for Russian
Retrievers, but only one set of C.c.'s The best Goldens had to
challenge the best Russians for the C.c.'s, and the Russians won
both of them! At the next show, however, there were Challenge
Certificates exclusively for Goldens, and the honour of being
the first to win a C.C. went to Mrs Charlesworth's dog Normanby
Sandy and Mr F. W. Herbert's bitch Coquette. The race was then
on to win 3 C.c.'s and a Field Trial award and thus become the
first Golden Champion, an honour achieved by Mrs Charlesworth
with her dog Noranby Campfire. All canine activities came to a
halt as the First World War grew in intensity, but the Golden
Retriever had done enough to establish itself in the canine
world, and the hearts of the dog owning public. |
