Where did the Golden Retriever breed come from??
Where did the Golden Retriever breed come from?
“The Golden Retriever can trace its ancestry back to a single breeding and the first pair of yellow retrievers destined to be called “Golden.” The fancy is indebted to a Scotsman, the former Sir Didley Majoriebanks, first Lord Tweedmouth of Guisachan at Inverness, Scotland, and the first “breeder” of our golden dog.
“Typical of 19th-century aristocracy, Tweedmouth was an avid sportsman and waterfowl enthusiast. His passion as a hunter was equaled only by his dedication to the sporting dog. During the 1850s he turned his attention to the moderate sized retriever varieties who were the “water dogs” of that era. They possessed great courage, strength and temperament and not surprisingly, a superior nose. Although color was unimportant to most sportsmen, Tweedmouth was a true vanguard of his time and was bent on developing a yellow retriever strain.
“Tweedmouth purchased his first yellow retriever in 1865, a dog named Nous (the Greek word for wisdom).” Nous is shown to be a large and handsome dog with a very wavy medium-color coat, very much resembling the modern Golden Retriever. Later, Tweedmouth’s cousin presented him with a Tweed Water Spaniel named Belle, which was the preferred hunting dog of that region.
“Belle was destined to become the foundation of Tweedmouth’s plan to develop a yellow retriever breed. In 1868 the now-famed breeding of Nous and Belle resulted in four yellow pups.” “This produced the foundatin stock from which all of today’s Golden Retrievers decend. Goldens were first brought to North America in the late 1890’s and were first registered by the American Kennel Club (AKC) in 1925.”
