Are there any possibilities that the Golden Retriever may have black colour? Or Black Labrador with long haired like Flat-coated Retriever?

Thanks for information.

(bewitch137@yahoo.com)

Golden retrievers do sometimes have the odd black patch or black paw when they are born, most black paws do dissapear but I know a few dogs with small black patches..........

Could if you crossed the two breeds!
Dawn.

Could be a not very good Newfoundland. JH

I thought that too Jackie, there is a jouvenile rather leggy female in our area that could well be mistake for this.

Not many people realise that the retriever breeds were considered to be types of retriever, and could be interbred up until the 1970's! In fact there is in a flatcoated retriever newsletter a story about a breeder who bred a litter, and as was the case then registered some of the litter as labs and some as flatcoats. He then went on to win the labrador open ft stake with one pup, and win the flatcoated retriever open stake with it's full litter mate!
The golden retriever was developed from the flatcoat among other breeds, which might explain the black hairs. Flatcoats are often born with a few white hairs on the chest and feet.
There are a few lab cross flatcoats about too, so that is a real possibilty, or as another has said just a fine and juvenile newfoundland.

This is so! Up until then Goldens, Labradors, Flatcoats etc were known as varieties rather than breeds. For years inter breeding within the varieties was allowed. What always seems so strange to me is how all these differing breeds (As they are now) should be so very different in the hereditary eye ailments which afflict them. One would have thought under these circumstances they would all suffer from the same conditions!

Regards, John

John have the hereditary eye ailments become more common since the 1970's and would this be because perhaps when the different breeds standards were used as a quide to breeding that may be only a few studs were used and may be some of the studs were carring the eye trouble. Where as before the spliting of the types breeders would have used a stud that had what they were looking for, good bone, soft mouth etc., or may be one that was near by. After the spliting breeders would have to look further afield to find what was wanted and it is all to easy to think that the latest champion be it show or field would be the best stud available, it still happens now. Very simplistic, what are your thoughts on the subject. Jackie H

Whether eye ailments are more prevalent than in the '70's? I'm not sure Jackie. The water is muddied by better testing and by old ailments now being found to be hereditary where in the past they were accepted as just something dogs get from time to time. On top of that, one condition which was considered to be hereditary for years which is now known to be caused by a dietary deficiency and not hereditary at all! If you look at this year’s eye testing list there is only a couple of changes from last year and one of those is a condition which has been removed form a breed!

Small gene pool of stud dogs definitely does not help Jackie. If you take Flatcoats, it is very nearly impossible to not have Shargleam Blackcap in the pedigree at least once, usually 3 or 4 times! The same with Cambus Christopher in Goldens. Sandylands Tan and Tandy is in so many Labradors. Now that is not to say there is anything wrong with these dogs. But what it could mean is that because of the restrictive gene pool you could get what’s called "In-Breeding Depression" which is where litter sizes get smaller, fertility suffers and the general health of the dogs deteriorates. This is something numerically small breeds have to be especially careful about but it could happen even in a breed such as Flatcoats!

How many ACTIVE stud dogs are there in any breed? I mean stud dogs as opposed to "The dog down the road" which sires just one litter or so a year. Very Very few! Maybe in Labradors two or three dozen! And this with all the thousands of dogs registered in a year! Check the Breed Record Supplements if you don’t believe me, it's all there to be seen! Now if just one of these stud dogs has a temperament problem or an undiagnosed hereditary health problem then the end result could be more serious than one might think.

I'll pipe down now before I get on my hobby horse again and boor you all! :)

Regards, John

Thank you for your reply John, you have helped me put my thoughts in order, coming from a breed of small numbers, finding a dog that does not have at least some of the same ansestory as your bitch is very difficult if not impossible and it does not take long to get back to a time when eye or other health problems were not open to general knowledge so one is working on hearsay rather than fact. As you say even with the improved knowledge we have now, mistakes are still made, to a certain extent we too have had trouble with eye testing one specialist putting one name to a fault found and another calling it something else, one being hereditary and one unknown. In my own breed there are few true studs and even fewer if you group those studs who are related. I have not looked at this in detail, but I will now, but I would have thought that if one grouped the related studs together you would probably be left with only 2 or 3 seperate lines and even then their would be crossovers, and that is only looking at studs who are of course easier than the broods to sort being less in number. Barbara (Brainless) would probable know more about this as she with a couple of friends imported a dog from the USA because of the difficulty of finding a suitable stud who is not carring a large number of the same animials in their pedigrees. The only problem with importing a dog to use for stud unless he is proved you have no idea what you are getting and only time will tell, and how may of us are able to keep repeating the exercise of bringing in new blood from abroad and even if we could do you not think that breeders may well lose that they have spent years building up. We only registered small numbers of pups every year,102 in the year 2000. I know this has little to do with original post but it is something I have long been chewing over and your thoughts are of great interest. Thank. Jackie H

It is always said that a breed stands or falls on the quality of its dogs and it's easy to see why. There are so many more breeding bitches than there are active stud dogs that the dogs have a disproportionate effect on the breed as a whole. With your breed Jackie, if one of those stud dogs had an undiagnosed problem just think of the overall effect on the breed! The health checks are so very important! Trouble is, bringing dogs in from aboard can also result in bringing in problems. They can be carried as a recessive and not show in the dog but a few years down the line, out of the woodwork they come. DNA testing is possibly the way forward but with certain firms taking out copyright on parts of the genome that looks further away than at any time in the past few years. I used to think that we would be seeing it in general use in a very short time but now. . . . . . .

Regards, John

Hi Jackie,
Your comments on this thread are exactly what I was talking about when I posted about the CC winners, not that I was opposed to exhibiting multiple cc winners, which unfortunately everyone thought was my point. I agree totally with John, there are very few pedigrees in some breeds where a multiple cc winner does not appear at least once or twice. In flatcoats we have Shargleam Blackcap, who thankfully was a healthy dog, on the show side and on the working side it is almost impossible to find a pedigree without Tarncourt Cavalier in it. If you do, you usually find it has his brother Crofter in it! So where do we go for a stud dog?
There are always plenty of bitches around but you have to think about how many puppies does a bitch have? Our code of conduct requires three litters or 30 puppies maximum from a bitch, there is no limit however to a stud dog. Assuming a stud dog mates three bitches a year, and each has ten puppies, that dog is not retired in following years from stud. He can if mated three times a year for ten years produce 300 puppies in a lifetime! Which again brings me back to the point about multiple cc winners and the need to identify other worthy dogs for stud use. It is more important than most people think.

And the % of the 300 pups that are male some will be used at stud carring 50% what ever the original stud had in his genes and so on. If there is a ressive problem then by the time it comes to light goodness knows how may carriers your breed will now have, as it may well only come to light if someone line breeds, not so popular as it once was at least not in my breed. Jackie H

But when there are so few stud dogs, everything is line bred! there is no choice because there are no unrelated dogs! Just find all descendants of Glenhead Jimmy in Labradors and the only reason why that does not turn up every modern Labrador is because my database is incomplete! We need to be so very careful in our breeding. Maybe a stud dog which is not quite so popular could be worth its weight in gold in putting a little variation into the gene pool

Best wishes from an old worrier :(

Trouble is in our breed John that all the 'reasonable' males are siblings or progenee to the favoured studs, please forgive spelling. Sorry fish & chips have arrived I'll be back. JH

I'm back, now where was I, yes my Breed Club have been suporting the Canine Geno project in the hope that it will be able to help breeders in the future breed out hereditry desease. Will this also be affected by firms and labs placing copyright on the findings? What is the world coming to, I know that R & D costs but this can't be the way forward, how is it possible for someone to own a piece of my DNA or that of my dogs for that matter? Talk about 'Stop the world I want to get off' Jackie H