The History of the Golden Retriever

February 3rd marks National Golden Retriever Day! There’s a lot to celebrate about goldens: from their adorable faces to their sweet personalities to their intelligence to their versatility as hunting dogs, family companions, service dogs, and more. Golden Retrievers are just too dang loveable. You can’t fit all of our appreciation for goldens into a single day, so instead we’ll focus on an aspect that gets a little abandoned: their history. Golden Retrievers haven’t been around forever; in fact, they’re one of the younger dog breeds on the block. 

So let’s find out the origin story of one of America’s favorite family-friendly dog breeds! The story begins in 1860’s England and Scotland with a very awesome, very British set of names: Dudley Marjoribanks, later known as Baron Tweedmouth. 

Marjoribanks’ Quest for the Ultimate Retriever

Dudley Marjoribanks, later Baron Tweedmouth, was a gentleman, investor, and dog-breeder who wanted to create an ultimate retriever. He spent half of his time in London as a member of the House of Commons; the other half, when parliament was not in session, he spent at Giusachan (“yoush-a-gan”), a country estate in the Scottish Highlands. 

While on a walk in Brighton in the 1860s, Marjoribanks saw a cobbler with a golden flat-coated retriever named Nous. Seeing that the dog was obviously of good breeding, Marjoribanks questioned the cobbler about him. 

The cobbler told Marjoribanks that he had acquired Nous from an employee who owed him a debt and needed to get rid of the dog anyway. Since the fashion of the day said that black dogs were the superior hunters, dogs of other colors weren’t kept by highborn families. So, when a pairing of black dogs occasionally produced a puppy of an odd color, they got rid of the colored puppy. According to the AKC, “had Nous not been given to a tradesman, he might not have survived at all.”

Marjoribanks bought Nous and, a few years later, bred him to Belle (a Tweed Water Spaniel) while at Giusachan. He hoped the pairing would create a litter of extremely well-rounded retrievers that could go between land and water to hunt all kinds of game, from grouse to red deer. Their litter became what are now considered the first Golden Retrievers: Cowslip, Crocus, and Primrose. 

Instead of being thrown out like Nous might have been, these golden puppies were instead intensely valued by Marjoribanks. He kept Cowslip to continue breeding, but gave Crocus and Primrose to close family members. Cowslip’s babies and grandbabies all produced puppies that ranged in color from straight black to light cream, but Marjoribanks made sure that the golden-coated dogs became the new breed’s foundation stock.

For several years, long after Marjoribanks’ death, the Golden Retriever was considered a color variety of the Flat-coated retriever. However, between the 1910s and 1930s, it became recognized as its own breed by the Kennel Club in the UK and the AKC in the USA. From there, Goldens spread throughout the world and won the hearts of hunters and families the world over. Nowadays it is one of the most recognizable breeds in the world and is among the most frequently registered breeds in the Western world.

Sources: 

https://www.akc.org/expert-advice/dog-breeds/behind-the-breed-golden-retriever-history/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Retriever

Hey, Nick and Mandy Burnham here. We breed our Golden Retrievers, but we aren’t your usual breeding family. Awareness of unethical puppy mills has increased in recent times, and breeders aren’t accepted. We don’t blame people for calling them out. We call them out as well.