Everything's Coming Up Golden
October 18, 2021
If you love Golden Retrievers, you’re going to love this. Imagine 20 of these golden beauties getting together for some friendly fun in the sun.
For the past 10 years, Pooch Pack Adventures have held their annual Golden Retriever Roundup Day in Nanaimo. Situated just off the east coast of Vancouver Island, there’s no end of adventure trails, beaches and rivers where Pooch Pack’s dogs can run and play. And today, they’re headed down to the river, nestled in the rocky, woodland landscape of beautiful British Columbia.
But how do you get 20 golden retrievers to sit for a photo, all perfectly posed, still and silent? Take them swimming, play fetch in the water and let them splash around until they’ve burned off all that excitable energy. Only then will they listen to you.
Golden retrievers are the perfect for this photo roundup day, as they are so smart and eager to please. Their friendly, tolerant nature makes them the ideal family pet and one of the most popular breeds in Canada and the US. They get along well with kids and other pets and are easy to train. They make great working dogs and are often employed as sniffer dogs, therapy dogs and guide dogs.
According to the American Kennel Club, the Golden Retriever breed owes its ancestry to one man by the name of Dudley Coutts Marjoribanks. Born in Scotland in 1820, as a young boy Marjoribanks had always been interested in dog breeding, once a well-respected hobby for the socially mobile. He kept a complete record of all the litters he bred and their lineage, which safely resides today at the Kennel Club in England.
As the story goes, in 1865 Marjoribanks was out walking with his son one day in the British seaport of Brighton, when he spied a golden-coloured dog with a long wavy coat. His name was Nous and he belonged to a cobbler who got him from the worker of a local nobleman in payment of money owed. At the time, golden-coloured dogs were considered poor sporting dogs compared to their black counterparts and were often destroyed or given away.
Marjoribanks took Nous home and began to think how he could improve the hunting capabilities of this beautiful dog. When his cousin gave him a beautiful, liver-coloured Tweed Water Spaniel (now extinct, but very similar to the Irish Water Spaniel), it struck him. What a brilliant match, to cross a retriever with a water spaniel. And so in 1868, Nous the retriever and Belle the water spaniel had their first litter of perfect Golden Retrievers: Cowslip, Crocus and Primrose. It was the beginning of a golden age and the birth of the Golden Retriever as we know and love them today.