Gundog Digest. Working Goldens by Graham Cox

Working Goldens
Considering a distinctive gundog challenge.

Golden Retrievers

It might seem strangely perverse to begin an assessment of working Golden Retrievers by talking about labradors. But it isn't, of course, because in a very obvious way labradors, in this the hundredth year since they were first registered at the Kennel Club, set the standards to which others must aspire.
Other breeds have no choice but to strive in their own way because seeking simply to ape the labrador is bound to compromise their own identity. But the competitive record of the labrador can't be disregarded. It doesn't simply speak for itself. It shouts and stamps its feet. Nor is it a record of only recent provenance. For once the labrador came seriously onto the scene the speed with which, colossus like, it came to bestride the world of working retrievers, was nothing short of remarkable.
The first trial for retrievers in 1899, won by the Flatcoated Retriever 'Painter' was in fact a mixed stake with two Clumbers, one Irish Spaniel and one Field Spaniel competing alongside a Curly Coated Retriever and five Flatcoats. So there was no labrador represented. A decade and more on, in the last full season before the Great War, some 14 field trial meetings were held and, of the 247 dogs which entered, no fewer than 179 were labradors. Succeeding years simply accentuated the pattern as curly coats departed the competitive scene and flatcoats receded.
Golden Retrievers were initially registered as flatcoats and defined, at that stage, only by colour. Registered by the Kennel Club as a separate variety under the title 'Golden or Yellow Retrievers' in 1911. the following year saw the breed secure its first trial award when Capt.H.F.H.Hardy took second place in the Gamekeepers' National Association Open Stake at Netherby. In more recent years only Golden Retrievers have managed, on occasion, to mount a serious challenge to labrador dominance at the highest levels of competition. Just three times during the post-war period a golden has won the International Gundog League's Retriever Championship. In each of the other 53 years the name of a labrador - invariably a black labrador - has been inscribed on the Glen Kidston Challenge Cup.
So the public record overwhelmingly endorses the assessment offered by Colonel Hawker when, in 1830, he found himself lamenting the dearth of the dogs he considered "by far the best for any kind of shooting". It wasn't until the last decade of that century that the name labrador became common usage, but enthusiasts would soon have no doubt that Hawker's extravagant claim that the breed was "without a living equal in the canine race" had been substantially vindicated.
Other breeds, of course, had their committed advocates. One hundred years on from Hawker's paean to the labrador, Captain Hardy published his book Good Gun Dogs and in it he explained why he had kept goldens for more years than any other breed of gun dog. It was not just a matter of sentiment. "I do like them best of all", he emphasised: but he accounted for that liking in very practical terms. "I find them easy to train and to manage, good trackers of wounded game, and excellent at water work."
A little later the Rev. E.N.Needham-Davies, contributing a chapter on the breed to a book titled Gun Dogs: Their Training, Working & Management and conscious that his article would be read in a comparative sense with the articles on other varieties of the retriever family, drew attention to similar qualities. Being a younger breed the Golden, he felt, had not been crossed as had happened with some other varieties. So, whereas some Field Trial work showed dogs to be very reliant on the whistle the Golden had not lost his ancestors' hunting traits. "Fast and sure", he wrote, "is excellent, they are two gundog virtues but the greater of these is sureness. The Golden, broadly speaking, is sure." with "a nose second to none, he holds his line and carries it." Too much pace, he added, and he may drop it.

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