yellow flatcoats(1)


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Written by the late Read Flowers and first published in 1992

During the past decade or so, a small number of yellow Flatcoat puppies have been bred and reared.  The appearance of these somewhat unusual animals has aroused considerable interest, and opinions as to their desirability are strongly divided.

Your Committee has suggested that some of its members should try to give  balanced appraisal of the situation.

I think it is necessary to reach back as far as possible into the past and speculate a little, to build up a picture of things in the early years of our breed.

About the end of the 19th Century, Curlycoats were losing favour and Labradors and Goldens were not yet recognised by the Kennel Club as separate breeds, although they were kept for work by a few far-sighted estate owners.  Flatcoats were the predominant retriever breed, "gentlemen's" dogs as my Father described them, and no doubt there were many high-class workers among them.  At this time, Flatcoats were unchallenged in Field Trials.

Working ability, not merely pedigree, was the thing that was in demand, and what was more sensible than to use a judicious Flatcoat cross to help improve virtues or to eliminate faults in the emergent breeds and to given them a broader genetic bas when their numbers were so few?

Such interbreds would have become members of the breeds they most resembled, and I repeat, as long as they worked well, there would be no problem.

In the case of a Flatcoat/Golden cross, the black would all carry the yellow gene, and I do know of more than one such mating over the years.  The Flatcoat/Labrador cross was less likely to produce yellow, but some yellow dogs and some yellow carrying blacks would have resulted.

Moving on, we know that the Flatcoat fortunes declined rapidly from the beginning of the Great War.  Goldens and Labradors became the more popular breeds, and as a lad, I understood that the very few Flatcoats that I knew were "the old fashioned sort".

In the twenties, it seems obvious that registration requirements were pretty haphazard, because at this time a dog Don of Gerwyn appears in both Flatcoat and Golden pedigrees, and he was described as a "brown dog".

By 1946, our breed was even rarer, six years or more having gone by with little or no breeding done, and crosses were made to keep Flatcoat lines going.  The wheel had turned full circle.

Now we had there period when 'pink form' registrations were allowed.  After the long years of war, people were beginning to take up sports and hobbies again.  With travel restrictions easing, dog shows and shooting were able to resume, and there were many dogs throughout the land that had changed hands, being found on bomb sites, or had become unidentifiable for a hundred reasons.  Some of these were very good specimens, and the KC allowed them to be registered on a 'pink form'.

It was necessary to take the animal to an authority on its supposed breed, and if the expert decided it was a 'typical specimen', the form was signed and the animal put on the 'B' Register.  Its progeny were eligible for full KC Registration and could be shown or run in trials.  The pedigree would have stated 'Pedigree Unknown' after the foundling's name.  Another possible source of alien blood for any breed.

In the fifties I even saw a yellow Curlycoat at a show.

The above is intended to explain my belief that all the retriever breeds had close and interwoven blood relationships at this period.

After a further forty years of more carefully document breeding, however, the position has changed.  The majority of Curlycoat, Flatcoated and Golden Retrievers are bred to a type with the breed standards in view, and it seems to me that there are more differences between the breeds than used to be the case.  The position in Labradors is different because they have such a very strong working following and so have not always been bred so strictly to the standard.  Nevertheless, their workers are usually good looking animals of sound temperament.

We, in Flatcoats, have a variety that is increasing in popularity and improving in quality, particularly in the past fifteen years.  The breed that was so carefully nurtured by those devotees who brought together the remnants that were available in 1946 has developed into a really worthwhile product, good to look at and good at the work it was designed for.

As to health, both in eyes and in hips, we are better than Goldens or Labradors.  Their breeders have reason to envy us in this respect.

Our standard colours are black and liver, but I hope to have shown that the yellow gene has probably always been present.  It is a recessive gene which can only result in a yellow pup if both parents carry it.  It can remain hidden for several generations until the right mating comes along.

It could probably be eliminated by a strict selective breeding programme.  I doubt the result would be worth the effort, and who knows what we might lose along with the yellow factor?

With the present stock and with careful breeding selection, we are in a position to continue to improve both soundness and type in the future, and I shall be surprised if this does not happen.

If any of us should produce yellows in a litter there are several things that may be done:

First:  rear them for sale.  I saw an advertisement a year or two ago which read "yellow Flatcoats, the popular new variety ..."  No comment!

One could immediately cull them, but that may be too hard a path to follow.  I would hope that I would be able to do it.

The sire's owner should be informed of the situation, and extra care taken thereafter, with both parents, to try not to mate to animals that have themselves produced yellow.

Second:  If the yellow pups are reared, they should be passed on without papers, or with the registration form endorsed "Progeny not eligible for registration".  If for some very compelling reason it later became desirable to breed from such a dog, the ban could be revoked only by the breeder.

I hope that we shall never be obliged to alter our breed standard to include yellows.  If we did so, I believe there would be a greater chance of inter-bred stock being introduced into the breed, with all the risks of eye, hips and other troubles these animals could bring.

Your committee has considered this subject very carefully, and with a great deal of though and experience, we have agreed to recommend this course of action.  We hope that you will be able to support us in the best interests of the breed.

Read Flowers (1992)