This tricolor BC has the black and tan coloration that its ancestors introduced into retrievers and Gordon setters.
Here is a painting of a terrier, a pointer, and a retriever by Landseer. The retriever is obvious. It even has the same expression in its eyes we see in our dogs today. It is black and tan with some white on its chest. This black and tan color was quite common in the wavy-coated landrace and the old flat-coated retriever breed. It still exists in the Labrador.
The black and tan coloration comes two sources. One that is usually mentioned is the Gordon setter, which is black and tan. However, in the nineteenth century, Gordons were allowed to come in a much wider variety of colors. And the Gordon got its black and tan coloration from a specific source.
And I think that this source is the main source for black and tan in retrievers, too.
All the classic dog books talk about the use of collies in producing retrievers, including Idstone, who talks about how much the introduction of collie blood improves a retriever. If you would like to see what the typical collie of the nineteenth century looked like, click here. This is an excellent post about what collies once looked like. Queen Victoria did not have the borzoi-muzzled dogs we know as collies today.
And what I find interesting is that if you cross a modern collie, even a sable one, with a golden. You’ll get a very similar dog. (The only dog that isn’t a collie-golden cross on that page is the golden mix with collie ears). These dogs are always black with some white or black and tan. And they strongly resemble the old-type collie and the old wavy-coated landrace of retriever with collie ancestry.
Further adding to my case, when I was growing up, the neighbors had an English shepherd that looked like a very long-haired flat-coated retriever. She was solid black in color with floppy ears. In fact, when I first saw a flat-coat in a dog book, I thought that the flat-coat was an English shepherd.
In the loose-eyed Welsh sheepdog, which is one of those working collie breeds, one can find dogs that also have this appearance. The dog in the link looks very much like my neighbor’s English shepherd.
For those of you who have heard the golden called a “swamp collie,” you now know that collie-types were important in the founding of its ancestors. You should take this supposed pejorative in pride, because the collie introduced even higher levels of biddability and intelligence in our dogs.
Because the collie crosses happened before the surge in collie popularity, I think tendency to not make as much a deal out of collie in the retriever bloodlines. Collies were dogs for working class people, while retrievers were dogs for the landed gentry. Admitting collie ancestry would be almost like suggesting some sort of taint to their noble retriever dogs. Further, I think that the retriever breeders who bred collie into their lines were less willing to admit the cross because doing so would admit a trade secret. And collies were very common throughout Britain and Ireland.
We often refer to my English Shepherd as a “Golden in a Collie suit.” My boy isn’t a typical ES though. Audie’s far more social than most ES and he has as much retrieving drive as most of the working labs and goldens I’ve worked with — including that urge to carry things around. You can tell how happy the boy is by the size of the thing he’s carrying.
He’s also an absolute fool for the water. Howls and vibrates in anticipation when I stand by the water with a bumper. I’d like to take him bird hunting this fall. I think he could be a decent bird dog.
I think there is definite common ancestry between retrievers and collie-types. I even think that collies played a strong role in the development of the St. John’s dog, the Newfoundland, and the wavy-coated retriever landrace.
The easiest dogs for me to work with are performance bred retrievers and “unimproved” (I hope you like this word) collies.
I know what you’re saying but I think that “unenhanced” might be a more appropos term.
The show collie is the Trophy Wife version of the farm collie. Dizzy blonde with hair extensions, a nose job and vacant expression — it kinda fits…
While Audie is extreme for sociability, biddability, and retrieving drive — for any dog, any breed, any bloodline, much less an English shepherd — I have no difficulty believing that the biddability and much of the teamwork ethic of the golden retriever came in large part from an ancestral farm collie heritage. (It also pleases me to think of two of my favorite kinds of dogs linked in this way.)
One thing that I have noticed in comparing credible modern English shepherd “Lassie chronicles” to credible stories of their ancestors 50+ years ago is that there are fewer stories of modern dogs that will fetch and carry anything for their masters. Other functional traits appear to have been widely and well preserved, but the dog’s function as a spare “hand” seems no longer widespread among farmers.
Was this something that got specialized away, as even farmers started to consider retrieving a specialty for … retrievers?
Did it get selected out with more emphasis on stockwork and/or guardian functions?
Did it get lost during an era when large kennels of non-working dogs made a disproportionate contribution to a bottlenecked gene pool? Dogs that are clever with their mouths are hard to contain, and are among the most likely to get culled from a kennel population.
If the OddMan is a throwback to a time of more orally-oriented, and therefore versatile, ES, I hope it works out that he gets to pass those concentrated genes on to the future — help us retrieve the retriever in the ES breed.
Audie’s sire, a working stockdog, won’t even play fetch with his owners’ kids — they were thrilled when Pip came to visit and would play frisbee with them until it was too dark to see. She’s a tolerably enthusiastic water dog, too, but her litter-sister was made of sugar and would melt.
Audie’s mission to retrieve was fully present when he was six weeks old, and was more serious and committed than I have ever seen in any pup, any breed, in dozens of working-bred litters I’ve evaluated. It is genetic and was apparent as soon as his individual personality emerged. As is his biddability, and his sociability with people, which latter trait he shares with virtually all his close relatives.
He’s probably the most interesting individual ES I’ve met — for one thing, all his outlier traits are really desirable ones — and was a really cool surprise coming from the union of Pip and Boss. I expected to get pups exactly like his brothers Morgan and Tuck and his sisters Rose and June in his litter. Audie was a pleasant surprise, and I am grateful that Janeen was there to make good use of him.
On another note, why is it that golden retrievers crossed with just about anything seem to throw a lot of black puppies? Whether or not the other dog is black, it seems.
Goldens are black dogs (well 99 percent of them). The selection for black pigment in the breed mean that their genetics for the black versus liver color is B/B. Liver flat-coats and chocolate Labs are b/b. However there is another gene that makes the yellow or red or almost white that’s e/e. That’s a recessive color. If a dog has E/E, the dominant gene, it will not be red or yellow– it will be black or liver. The vast majority of goldens are BBee. The few brown skinned goldens are bbee. If a black-skinned golden is crossed with virtually anything the genetic often work as if it’s being crossed with a black dog. I had a dog that was out of a English golden and Brindle boxer. All nine puppies were black. In fact, they I kept one of them. It happens only with Brindle boxers. With a fawn boxer X golden, the puppies are usually fawn or brindle. http://retrieverman.wordpress.com/2008/12/07/my-golden-boxer/ This dog had one good purpose: she was murder on skunks. If I hated skunks with a passion or could sell their fur, she would’ve been a wonderful dog to have.
If what I’ve read is correct, the English shepherd is the original collie landrace that once existed throughout the British isles as the small crofter’s dog. It was preserved in America. Perhaps out of that farm dog soup there existed dogs with strong retriever characteristics. This was why they made up some of the early retrievers. This is a retriever from collie extraction or a retrieving collie on the left: http://www.donaldheald.com/s5266.html
It used to be in West Virginia that farm houses generally had an English or “Scotch” shepherd or two lurking around. I know lots of old farmers who call a collie dog a shepherd. These dogs brought in the milk cows in the morning and then hunted varmints at night. These were dogs of no special breeding. Very few were ever registered. But they were a definite type. I can remember them at my grandpa’s farm.
I’ve seen the retrieving instinct in lots of different breeds. My grandmother’s fierce mini dachshund was an obsessive retriever. My uncle’s current jack russell is better retriever than my golden, and he’s dead serious about it.
But retrieving collies were a very important dog for creating the wavy-coated retriever. It’s possible that dogs with this behavior proved a novelty and were shown off by the small crofters. When landed person happened upon one of these dogs, I’m sure he thought, “Maybe that shepherd dog wold be good to add to my retriever stock.”
Nous, the Adam of all golden retrievers, was purchased in this way. He’d been given to cobbler in lieu of a debt from a Lord’s litter of black-wavy coats. In those days, all retrievers were expected to be black, so yellows and livers were often culled. The 1st Baron Tweedmouth (Dudley Marjoribanks) was impressed with the red dog’s retrieving ability, so he bought him. He proved to be a superior retriever.
Retrieving and herding are related behaviors, so it really doesn’t surprise me that there might be a few herding collies that really like to retrieve. I’ve not seen the converse– a retriever that can herd. But one might exist out there somewhere.
Audie sounds like an interesting dog. I wish we had open registries, so thatwe might be able to use retrieving collie-types as outcrosses. Because that’s what all of those old retriever people did. The best ones thought outside the box and tried different outcrosses.
My neighbor’s dog looked like this dog sans the tan markings:
http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/images18/EnglishShepherdAxl2.JPG
Compare with this retriever from an 1840 painting of the shooting party at Ranton:
http://www.donaldheald.com/s5266.html
Interesting Dierdre’s head (Gollie page) has a very Flat-Coated Retriever look.
Retreiverman –
Thanks for your explanation, here and earlier on the ES/flatcoats post/comments Now, a whole lot about Pepper’s early life makes sense.
Pepper, her sister Shyanne and her brother Tucker were from a West Virginia shelter that gases overflows, but to prevent that, has a relationship with a Southeastern PA rescue so that puppies can be placed here. (I also suspect that they tranport west, too, as I later posted Pepper’s picture on the “Guess my dog’s breed” board over at SitStay.com and a guy from Chicago sent me a picture of his male BC mix who was the same age, 5 pounds bigger and except for a slightly longer tail and a white mark on his face, has the *exact* same markings as Pepper, right down to the black spot on the left side of her white chest)
Now, I found Pepper on PetFinder because her sister and brother were completely black and the rescue couldn’t get good pictures of them. So, they photographed Pepper to represent the puppies. However, in spite of Pepper’s white collar, white tail tip and white socks with black sports on them, she was listed as a “flatcoat retriever.” (This is even funnier because she WILL NOT retrieve — my cat who is 1/4 Maine Coon loves to retrieve, but she refuses)
I asked the rescue why, when Pepper so obviously appeared to be a BC, they listed the puppies as flatcoats. They told me that Tucker “looked like a Lab” (he was so beautiful and outgoing that he was adopted immediately at his first “puppy day” at the local pet supply shop — I never met him, but he’s one of the reasons I believe that black animals need a chance to interact with people — the rescue oouldn’t get a picture of him for PetFinder for anything, but he’s a legend in the charm department for them.) Tucker was black and short-haired, Shyanne is black and long-haired (with the same Shiba Inu tail as Pepper, but much more Shiba in personality), so with 2 out of 3, they went with the “flatcoat” label on PetFinder.
As Pepper herds, everyone assumed she was mostly Border Collie and then just argued over what strain of primitive dog gave her that tail and deep suspicion of strangers. After observing that she appears to speak fluent “Shiba” with other Shiba Inus (not a terribly outgoing with other dogs breed!), we’ve come to agree with my vet that she’s got a good dash of Shiba Inu in there.
Then I found out about ES and finally asked Heather and Janeen what the difference (behavoir-wise, of course! ;-)) was between BC and ES. Looking over that list, Pepper seemed to have more ES traits than what they considered BC. She also seems more like Heather’s dog Moe in personality and what she likes to do (except for the water thing — Pepper is either made out of sugar or it’s that Shiba hertiage kicking in and telling her that water is nasty, nasty stuff!) than any of the other dogs I’ve read about on these blogs.
Now, reading your posts that when you first saw a flatcoat, you thought it was an ES and that in West Virginia, the crofters ususally had ES-type dogs, it’s all making sense. The puppies weren’t mis-labeled — folks were just labeling them as they understood the dogs and as the puppies were a regional landrace (although I’m still convinced some rich person’s intact male Shiba from one of the fishing resorts is the daddy!), they didn’t quite fit either the PetFinder slots or the different region’s rescue’s perceptions.
While my paternal grandmother’s family lived between Ned, PA and Hundred, W VA for quite a long time, once my grandmother got to the big city (Pittsburgh) most of the rest of the family got educated and got out of farming. So, while I spent summers in Ned/Hundred as a child, I really don’t know as much about farming from that persepctive (I’m a grower because I take after my PA Dutch maternal grandfather). Thanks for filling in the pieces for me!
I have a great uncle who lives in New Martinsville, so I know the area you’re talking about.
I don’t think there are many flat-coats in this state, but there are tons of English shepherds.
A friend of mine has black English shepherd of that type that they thought was a golden/Lab mix, and I told them that it was either an English shepherd or a collie/golden mix. And she’s very intelligent.
For some reason there are lots of solid black English shepherds in West Virginia, and a lot of them look like flat-coated retrievers with really long, thick hair.
It’s possible that these black dogs go back to colonial times, and maybe they also found their way to Newfoundland, where they mixed with Iberian water dogs, Basque and Portuguese herders and guard dogs, English and Irish water spaniels, and maybe even Inuit dogs from the Canadian mainland to make the St. John’s water dog. Add a little mastiff, and you get the big Newfoundland.
BTW, shelters in WV aren’t necessarily the best in the world. At one time, one county’s shelter dealt with overflows in a brutal way. The sheriff’s deputies would take the overflows, tie them to stakes in a field, and then use the dogs for target practice.
The state actually had to stop them from doing so.
WV has no kennel licensing agreements, and our department of agriculture refuses to regulate dog enterprises (it doesn’t have enough money to do so– or so it says.)
The family reunion is in New Martinsville this summer — the Persingers are hosting. You aren’t a Thomas and Elizabeth Jones decendent, are you?
Growing up in Pittsburgh in the 60s (when there were no leash laws), I saw many dogs which looked like your neighbor’s dog — both with and without the tan markings. They were just considered the area’s “regular” mutt — ie, no German Shepherd (what the hard-core people had for “protection” when I was growing up) or poodle or anything that anyone could identify.
Shyanne has beautiful long, thick, black fur — a mink would envy her. I’ve been told that Pepper is smart, even for a BC. Christopher has pictures of Pepper — I’ll have to figure out how to send you copy so you can get a load of that tail!
My great uncle is a Wilson.
That’s the only family I have in Wetzel County.
I can see an interesting paper developing here if I were young and ambitious. Going back to shipping records, wills and other documents of British immigrants to that area, and looking for mention of dogs and farm animals. The farm animals would be a clue as to why dogs would be included, since types/landraces that were all purpose stock dogs no doubt existed. Did each migration of Brits bring their landraces with them, are there any similar types left in East Anglia or Devon or Cornwall? West Virginia? The Tidewater? What can be determined from the DNA of existing dogs that fit the phenotype?
David Hackett-Fischer wrote a fascinating book back in 1989 entitled “Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America in which he writes about 4 important groups of English people who settled the Eastern seabord of the US. Alas, the farm animals were not part of his research, but much could be gleaned by the 4 leggeds my ancestors brought with them.
For instance, something that I suspect could be provable is that if a general all purpose collie type landrace arrived in say Virginia or Massachusetts in the 1670s, and 100 years later, they and their people felt compelled to abandon the colony because of Tory sympathies, and move to Nova Scotia & Newfoundland, they likely brought their working dogs with them.
I think the more interesting place to look at is Philadelphia. Most Scots-Irish settlers to the area where I grew up came into Philadelphia, and then down the Great Wagon Road into the Shenandoah Valley. Others came across Pennsylvania and either down the Ohio or up the Monongahela into West Virginia. The Germans actually beat the Scots-Irish to the frontier, but because they didn’t speak English, their history isn’t as well recorded. My own ancestors when from New York to the Allegheny River and then down it to Pittsburgh, then rode horses and drove oxen up the Monongalia Valley into West Virginia.
There used to be big droving roads across the Eastern US in the early nineteenth century. Cincinnati was a major meat processing center. Stock was driven down to Cincy, and then put on the Ohio and out to New Orleans, which was the biggest port in the country, even when it was in French and Spanish hands. The Spanish charged a huge duty to send goods through the port, which is one of the reasons why the US government wanted to buy it when Napoleon discovered that he had no ability to hold onto any of France’s New World possessions.
Remember my distant relative, Don Yoder, who I mentioned on Terrierman’s blog that wrote the Groundhog Day book? Well, if you decide you want to do the research, he has ALL the ships’ records that went to Philadelphia from its founding until the trains started. Now, his focus is PA Dutch folkways, but if someone came to Philadelphia, he either has the records or he can tell you where they are.
Let me know if you decide to persue this and I’ll give you an intro. Don would be so thrilled that the next generation actually cares about all his papers! ;-D
I’m of partial PA Dutch (Dietsch) heritage, along with a few Germans (Deutsche) who were brought over as indentured labor by the Dutch (the same ones we call the Dutch today) in New York.
There is delegate in the House of Delegates in WV whose last name is Yoder. He represents Jefferson County, which is in the lower Shenandoah Valley or Eastern Panhandles of WV. The Shenandoah Valley is part of the Great Valley that comes down from Central Pennsylvania down to Central Virginia. If you take I-81 from Harrisburg through the Shenandoah Valley– that’s the main path that most Scots-Irish and German Settlers came into the Appalachians– except mine– they came across NY State and then down.
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