Pheasant Ridge Ranch

By Jacqucline Barlow

Some 25 years ago, I was sitting at a Labrador specialty show with Mrs. Grace Lambert (Mrs. Lambert, in my opinion, was the first person in the United States to REALLY KNOW her Labradors; her Harrowby Kennels were small but all superb Labradors; she once bought an entire English kennel to obtain ONE special dog). As we sat, we were joined by a newly accredited Labrador judge, who remarked as a very dark yellow Labrador entered the ring, “That should be in with the Rhodesian Ridgebacks; it has no business here, look at the COLOUR!” I was wondering what I could say politely (being young in those days) when Mrs. Lambert leant over and said, “That’s the true yellow colour, isn’t it, Lady Barlow?” I could have hugged her then and there. We had in fact talked of yellows and how the colour was going, though Mrs. Lambert said she preferred the slightly lighter yellow, as the dark ones went white (or it showed) sooner. She did in fact have a dark yellow as one of her housedogs at the time. The dog in question, a Castlemore dog bred in Ireland, I later bought.

The first Labrador standard read, “the colour is black, yellow or any other whole colour.” By yellow, they meant the really dark golden colour, the colour of dead bracken, sometimes tinged with a slight coppery red. The original yellows were in fact called golden, until the British Kennel Club came to register them, and they argued that gold was not a colour, so yellow they became. BUT the yellow was indeed a very dark gold, and until after World War H, there was no such thing as a light yellow Labrador. Now, of course, in a lot of cases the colour has just about been bred out of them, a breeder friend in England, of the same vintage as myself, blames it on breeding to blacks. Certainly Mrs. Veronica Wormald, who bred from the original yellows continually for over 70 years with only one out- cross to a famous field trial black (she disliked and sold all the puppies), maintained her pure original very dark yellow throughout her life.

According to Lord Northesk, a well—known English sportsman and field trialer, yellows became popular during the war when women had taken over the gundog training with their men away, and they preferred the yellow colour. In passing, he also told me it was the best thing that had ever happened to dog training; women were gentler and more patient I and chattier, being used to dealing with children, which was exactly right for Labradors.

Most of my early dogs were Knaith or related Foxhangers, and so with the exceptional “Sandringham” have been dark yellow, the colour I grew up with. Sandringham’s brother Sandringham Salt (the Queen’s particular gundog), is a good dark colour.

Recently, when complaining to the secretary treasurer of the Yellow Labrador Club, of the practical nonexistence of the original dark colour nowadays, he put me in touch with Brian Yeowart, who had just bred his bitch to this splendid working gundog, Ch. Wynfaul Tobasco in the north of Scotland. Via him, I contacted the owner and breeder of Tobasco and acquired an eighteen- month-old son of his. A superb dog in both colour and conformation.

The remarkable thing about the old colour is the excellent conformation they throw, and they are born gundogs and retrievers. I suppose by more or less going out of sight they kept the original Labrador abilities, look and traits, including personality and temperament.

Mrs. Crook of the Balrion Kennels wrote recently, “I think they are a superb colour, absolutely true, to date excellent.” The Balrion dogs are to some extent responsible for the renewed interest and production of the original colour.

I am not sure I like the label “Fox-Red.” To ME, the colour is YELLOW, or nowadays, to tell the difference (from the washed out whites), DARK YELLOW. All these shades from cream to fox—red are too modern for me, though I suppose modern judges need to be given a range of shades of colour that is acceptable as YELLOW.

When people saw the working gundog Tobasco and persuaded Mac Bedford to show him, Mary Roslin Williams remarked in her column in Our Dogs (in England), how nice it was to see a dark yellow Labrador again. Anne Taylor (Fairbracken) made a similar remark in the Labrador Review (United States).

The first recorded yellow Labradors were born to Lord Wimborne’s “Duehess” in whelp to Major Radclyffe’s “Neptune” in 1892. Both were black. When Duchess had her litter of puppies, two — a dog and a bitch–were yellow. The bitch juno, when bred from, produced only black puppies, but the male Ben produced mostly yellows. From then on, Major Radclyffe concentrated on yellow dogs only, and about two generations of breeding showed no throwbacks to the black colour.Mrs. Arthur Wormald was one of the first (and certainly the longest to breed yellows) who sent her bitch to Major Radclyffe’s Ben of Hyde, or Hyde Ben. The first show at which she entered her yellows was the “National” in London, about 1912 — Major Radclyffe guaranteeing the yellow classes. Mr. Lucas won Best Yellow in Show with one of her puppies.In 1916 Mrs. Wormald took the prefix Knaith. In the early 1920s at the Alexandra Palace Show, the stewards tried to turn her yellow dog out of the ring, insisting Knaith Bounce was a Golden Retriever. Mrs. Wormald stood her ground, and her dog came third in the Breed. This event caused the Wormalds to start the Yellow Labrador Club.

In 1976 Mrs. Wormald wrote in the Labrador Retriever Magazine, “The type now exhibited dogs is different…I feel that it is very sad that the lovely deep golden colour is now rarely seen, and wish we could get it back again.”

Her dual Ch. Knaith Banjo, born in 1946, was (to date) the last dual champion in Great Britain, and her Ch. Knaith Beatty (1965-1979) was the first champion in the Breed to become a champion shown in Newfoundland. He was only once beaten in the Breed (by a black); he went BIS in his first show, achieving his championship in his third show. Mrs. Wormald was as proud of him as I was (for he was mine, or should I say I was HIS!).

They are having trouble with judges in England, who have preconceived ideas about what they think a Labrador should look like, and I believe we are having the same problem in North America. “The trouble,” according to an English breeder of an age with myself, “is that there are so many who never saw the GREAT DOGS, as you and I were so privileged to do!”

I think for those of us who did, we should pass on what we can, hence my article at this time on the true colour of the yellow Labrador.

Over the years, I have been tantalized by references in old histories of Newfoundland that mention “The Yellow Dogs of Petty Harbour,” but that is ALL, and nowhere can I get anything more! The Petty Harbour dogs of this century, and in living memory, were black or black and white. Surely the “Yellow Dogs” were the ancestor of our yellow Labrador, as Petty Harbour is quite near St.]ohn’s from whence most of the early water dogs were shipped to Poole in England.

I have a few pictures of the , yellows, including and since Hyde Ben in 1899, to the present day lovely dark gold and l coppery dogs in England and the United States, so that when you see the odd one about, you will know it was the old original colour. Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures of Mrs. Grace Lambert’s or Mrs. Helen Ginnel’s dark yellows of some years ago. Or of the lovely Foxhanger Midnight Madness CD, FTW (1963, owned by Barbara Starkey of Maryland), a grand- son of dual Ch. Knaith Banjo.

Ch. Wynfaul Tobasco, by the way, if you go back far enough, is descended from Banjo.

To end with an amusing story from South Africa — My son was on business in Johannesburg, and while sitting in a bar surrounded by Afrikaaners all talking Afrikaans, one hairy great fellow suddenly turned to Crispian and said in English, “What would you call a blond with brains?” “I don’t know, you tell me,” said Crispian. “A YELLOW LABRADOR, ha, ha!” and the chap went back to his Afrikaans conversation!