Golden Retriever

🌍 Overview

Golden retrievers were developed in Scotland in the mid-19th century by crossing flat-coated retrievers with Tweed water spaniels and other breeds to create an ideal hunting dog for Scotland's rugged terrain. Today they are beloved worldwide as gentle, trainable family companions and the most popular breed for therapy and assistance work after Labradors. Their famously tolerant temperament - patient with children and friendly with strangers - makes them iconic family dogs.

📋 Quick Facts

📜 History

For half a century the breed's official origin story was wrong. Both the English and American breed clubs endorsed a claim, promoted by Colonel W. le Poer Trench, that Goldens descended from Russian circus dogs. Lord Tweedmouth's Guisachan kennel records became available in the early 1950s, and the researcher Elma Stonex used them to demolish that account and establish the real line, which began with a yellow retriever named Nous that Tweedmouth bought from a Brighton cobbler in 1865. Four female puppies out of Nous stand behind every Golden alive, which makes this one of the few popular breeds whose founding litter can be named.

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