Product Description

In FOR THE LOVE OF GOLDEN RETRIEVERS eminent dog writer, Robert Hutchinson, traces with unprecedented clarity the bright Golden strand that runs straight and true through the jumbled history of retrievers. Replete with 100 photographs from a prestigious group of pet photographers, this book celebrates it beautiful subject in word and image.

The first chapter situates the Golden Retriever within the constellation of the six modern retriever breeds. Hutchinson enumerates the many features that the Golden Retriever shares with all retrievers: identical hunting functions, common ancestors, manifold interbreedings, and overlapping traits.

The second chapter tells the story of how one individual, Lord Tweedmouth, created the Golden Retriever on his estate in the Scottish Highlands. Tweedmouth's breeding program--begun in 1865 with the purchase of his foundation sire, a yellow Wavy-Coated Retriever named Nous--came to fruition in 1889 with the birth of two sisters, Prim and Rose, who embodied Tweedmouth's vision of the perfect Yellow Retriever. Hutchinson's analysis of Tweedmouth's meticulous records shows his program to have balanced the rule of linebreeding with recurrent outcrossings.

Hutchinson proceeds to quantify both the degree of inbreeding within Tweedmouth's program and the relative contributions of the breeds that went into it. He calculates the precise proportions of the three breeds (Flat- or Wavy-Coated Retriever, Tweed Water Spaniel, and Setter) that Tweedmouth folded together over the course of twenty years in order to end up with Prim and Rose. By further reducing these three breeds to their component ancestral breeds, Hutchinson contrives to extrapolate a description of the Golden Retriever as a blend of four ultimate precursors (Setter, Lesser St. John's Newfoundland, Springer Spaniel, and Water Dog). Hutchinson tests his results by matching the traits of our modern Golden Retriever against the traits of its four inferred ancestors.

Finally, Hutchinson speculates that Lord Tweedmouth's motive in creating the Golden Retriever might have been nationalistic; namely, to throw up a performance-oriented aristocratic British rival to Germany's golden-coated Leonberger, which was then all the rage in European courts.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1511262 in Books
• Published on: 1998-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 112 pages

Review
If you collect books on Golden Retrievers, here [is one] that you will want to add to your library. [It] will add a new dimension to your understanding of the Golden, and [is] just plain fun to read. [It] will also make a good gift for both current and prospective Golden owners. For the Love of Golden Retrievers is primarily a photo essay; there is text, but it is the photographs that will capture your heart. My favorite may be the Golden being paddled down the river in a canoe, but the beautiful backlit picture of a wet Golden shaking itself, with the water flying everywhere, is a close second. The photographs are by various professional photographers, and the reproductions are outstanding. None of the individual dogs is identified; they are your dog, my dog, every dog. The text recounts the history of the Golden Retriever and its development by Lord Tweedmouth. As Hutchinson points out, "Breeding was, furthermore, an endeavor that heartily recommended itself to men whose privilege and assurance of innate superiority depended on their own pedigrees. In the class society that was England, nothing was more ostentatiously English than hunting and breeding. Far from being an idle hobby, Lord Tweedmouth's yellow retriever breeding program at Guisachan was a serious and timely affirmation of aristocratic taste and prerogative." -- Barbara Branstad, co-author of Retriever Working Certificate Training and exhibitor of Goldens, - AKC Gazette, May 1999

This is a special prize of a book. On one hand, it contains spectacular color photos from several renowned pet photographers, such as Mark Raycroft, Donna Dannen, and Alan & Sandy Carey. But it also details the history of the Golden Retriever from an author who has spent several years as a research scientist at the American Museum of Natural History. -- Rochelle Lesser, Webmaster - Land of Gold Webpage, Spring 1999

About the Author
ROBERT HUTCHINSON is the author of many critically acclaimed books on the natural and social history of dog breeds. He was a research scientist at the American Museum of Natural History and studied paleontology at Columbia University.

Customer Reviews

For the Love of Golden Retrievers
This book is a pleasure to read, because it not only contains beautiful full-page, color calendar-quality photos of Goldens, but also gives the history of the breed as it became differentiated from other retriever breeds. The author has carefully documented the early geneology of the breed, and describes the scientific rationale for the program of inbreeding, line-breeding and outcrossing which established the breed characteristics. It was a real treat to find such depth of explanation presented so clearly. Experienced breeders as well as newcomers to the fancy will enjoy and learn from this book.