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Chapter XII - Colour The great Lorna, Countess Howe is reputed to have said, when a friend mentioned a yellow Labrador to her, 'The Labrador is a black dog', and for many years she seemed to adhere to this, although later on in life she did add the odd yellow to her kennel. I never felt she liked them though, although latterly she did have her photograph taken with one of them among her team of blacks, but all her great dogs were black. In spite of this I think we must now admit that there have always been the odd yellows cropping up in the otherwise black litters, even though the old breeders and keepers consigned them to the bucket and kept jolly quiet about them. It also seems likely that the occasional liver also appeared, 'buff'-colored dogs, which may have been yellow, or might have been livers. However that is surmise. Early in the twentieth century one or two breeders such as the Radclyffes and Mrs. Wormald took a fancy to these yellows and proceeded to breed them purposely. This was even before the first World War, although they did not become really recognised in their own right for quite a few years. Indeed at one Crufts the Steward tried to send Mrs. Wormald and one of her Knaith Labradors into the Golden Retriever ring, which she resisted with some vigour. Certainly in the 1930s Lady Ward of the Chiltonfoliat Labradors was breeding and trying to establish a liver strain, but they did not catch on as easily as the yellows and although a few breeders bred them deliberately between and after the two Wars they have only lately become popular. Indeed I was the first judge to give a CC to a liver, that being Mrs. Pauling's Ch Cookridge Tango, the first liver Champion and a gorgeous bitch by any standard. Now it is generally taken that the Labrador is black, yellow or liver (popularly called chocolate), these being the three recognized colours. But actually there are and were other colours. When I first came into Labradors in 1939 it was known that there was a white Labrador that could occasionally appear in the black lines, and by this I mean a true white, not an extremely pale cream. These Labradors appeared very seldom but through the same line, Ch. Durley Beech being one dog that carried the gene. I remember seeing one, a grandchild of Ch. Durley Beech during the War. It was a handsome dog, purest of pure white with no cream shading anywhere, neither on the tips of the ears nor just above the hock nor anywhere else. The pigment was jet-black and the dog looked like black in every way. The skin was pink. Years later to my utter amazement I bred one myself in a black litter. This was a black in every way, behaving like a black, looking and feeling like a black and with the same jet-black pigment and even more significantly having the eye colour of a black (yes I know that sounds odd but there is a slight difference between the eyes of a yellow and a black whatever the tone or shade). I had once been taught that there is nothing whiter than the white feather under the tail of a Woodstock, which I believe to be true, so having found that this white puppy made The Times newspaper, on which it was bedded, looked yellow and that it was also whiter than actual snow I tried it with a Woodstock's feather and found that they are exactly matched and was therefore the purest of pure whites. This puppy 'Blanco Of Mansergh' grew up into a most handsome fellow and was bought for his uniqueness by a famous breeder of another breed. He lived for many years and never showed any signs of the slightest shade of even the palest cream. He too descended from Ch. Durley Beech. It is only recently that I was given The Kennel Encyclopedia by Frank Townend Barton which gives details of a strain of white Labradors in Scotland owned and bred by Mr. Austin MacKenzie at Carradale in Argyllshire. They originated from 'Sam' whose grandsire was 'Stag' the sire of the famous 'Flapper', thus descending from the black Buccleuch strain. "Three litters from Sam were all buff-coloured except one bitch which was pure white. She was mated with Lord Lonsdale's Blanco, a bluish-white dog by Major Radclyffe's 'Ben', the cross producing eight white puppies and the colour was fixed. These white Labradors have been kept almost exclusively at Carradale and are seldom to be seen." This description of a bluish-white dog exactly fits the colour of the dog Blanco Of Mansergh which I bred myself, with no trace of cream. Mr. Mackay Sanderson, the great authority on Labrador bloodlines, writing in Our Dogs of the death of Lord Lonsdale said, 'He owned many notable specimens of which Blanco, a son of Major Radclyffe's 'Ben' may be singled out for prominence, this dog being regarded as a pivotal factor in the evolution of the whites which have received a lot of public attention from time to time.' I corresponded with Mackay Sanderson shortly before his death on the subject of white and he ratified the fact that we were talking about a pure white as in a Maremmer or a Pyrenean Mountain dog and not very pale cream. Mrs. Wormald's Knaith Bride was a very very pale cream, not white, having cream shadings. Incidentally her skin was pink with blue spots like a Dalmatian. Another colour that still occasionally appear is that of the 'Hailstone' Labrador, black spotted with white flecks. In my young days these were well liked because they were thought to be of the very old very true water strains, originating on the Solway. Lady Howe herself told me if I ever bred one to keep it because they always had the right coat, type and characteristics. However when I did breed one I found it was regarded with the greatest suspicion by other breeders and that the modern judges would not consider it, and as the Standard says that the colour should not be of flecked appearance much as I liked it I sold it as a pet and have regretted my weakness ever since. 'They' were wrong and I know I should have kept it. I remember one such Hailstone Labrador being shown at Crufts by old Mr. Dawson, the Angerton keeper, which won several 1st prizes and that Lady Howe went into the ring and patted the dog and looked it over with every sign of interest and approval. So I think I can safely say that this is a true Labrador colour in actual fact if not modern practice, and I for one am sorry that it is no longer recognized as such. The late Mr. Tom Dinwoodie was the last breeder to have them to my knowledge and he kept the last two he bred up to the day of his death, but he was of the old school and he knew they were 'all right'. 'Snowstorm' Labradors with big white flakes also appeared in the Solway. Other colours that are now a bugbear to us are the black-and-tans and the 'splashed' Labradors which I believe are really brindles. In case you have never seen a splashed puppy, this word exactly describes the picture. The splashing does not appear until the puppy is about four months old and because it comes under the flanks and on the lower part of the insides of the legs is not noticed. Then one day having had the puppy out in the rain you start to dry it and to your surprise some of the mud doesn't rub off. You rub and rub and eventually examine the splashes more closely and find that they are coloured bunches of hair, mostly exactly the colour of mud or occasionally golden. This is an awful shock to the owner unless they have seen it before and they feel the puppy is not pure bred. In a way they are right because it is probably a hereditary throwback to the brindle ancestor, although a tremendously long way back. I am convinced that the Labrador, being a manufactured breed of unknown origins carried all sorts of blood and that occasionally the genes meet and the throwback occurs. Funnily enough, splashing seems to crop up when a strongly-bred black bloodline is mated to a certain yellow line which occurred in Scotland, although it is very difficult to pin down. My very strongly black-bred stud-dogs have very occasionally thrown one when mated to blacks containing a lot of yellow, or when to a yellow bitch, but in every case I know of, and there have only been about six or less containing a splashed puppy in the forty odd years I have kept stud-dogs, in every case this one Scottish line appeared in the bitch's pedigree. Mine don't contain this line themselves. I have bred my own dogs and bitches to each other pretty closely and yet never produced one and indeed have only bred one myself and that was when I mated a black bitch to an outside black dog which I hadn't realised contained this Scottish blood in the seventh generation. But quite a lot of breeders have the occasional splashed puppy turning up and usually they get sold as slightly sub-standard pets with the advise that they are perfectly well-bred and that they will be really satisfactory in every Labrador way. The throwback is harmless, but there is no point in breeding from them, as it would be sure to crop up again. While I don't really worry about a splashed puppy I do dislike a true black-and-tan and as the lay people don't seem to realise the difference I will describe it. This is the Labrador that is clearly marked on legs, cheeks, eye-spots and chest with tan, either so dark you can scarcely see it except in certain lights, or it may be a bright tan, setter-red or even golden. Now to me this a very recent throwback and is completely un-Labrador and I hate it. In a way I would rather see one that is marked with the brightest tan, because then it is obvious that no one in their senses would breed from it. The markings follow exactly that of a truly black-and-tan breed such as the Gordon Setter, a Doberman, a Rottweiler or Manchester Terrier and is most objectionable. I am quite sure that the Labrador marked like this is wrongly bred and recently too, and that we had a Rottweiler or a Doberman come in sometime during and after the Second World War. A lot of strange blood came in at that time, some accidental but some deliberate, to produce and improve certain points and, because the Labrador stamp is very well established, they could pass as pure Labradors. Only by their fruits could we know them and these black-and-tans are I am sure some fruits of evil. To my mind they should be put down at birth, because the brightly marked ones show in the nest, being born with the Gordon Setter-like markings, i.e. tan across the muzzle, inside the ears and a spot over each eye, but even easier to see when tiny, with tan-coloured legs below the knees and hocks. I say that they should be put down because I suspect they carry recent guard-dog blood, such as Rottweiler or Doberman and therefore are likely to have temperaments that are not as equable as Labradors should and indeed must be. There is nothing more dangerous than a Labrador dog crossed with a guard dog, be it Alsatian or any other 'Army' breed. One treat them as Labradors and perhaps takes liberties with them and out comes the aggression. So while I feel we should not worry ourselves too desperately about splashed puppies, just taking care when next the bitch is mated, I eschew black-and-tan Labradors as being of very unreliable breeding and I rate them as dangerous. There is another colour which I had heard of but never seen and that was a rumour of a bluish or silver Labrador in the old days, with a dark stripe or stripes down the back. Funnily enough a litter of these turned up recently from perfectly reputable breeding and in the hands of a good breeder who knew that no misalliance had taken place. The bleeder took some coloured photos of the litter in which the puppies were silver, marked all over with dark stripes just like a Tabby cat. We were all stunned and fascinated and many were the guesses as to what will they turn out to be, but several of us guessed right and they gradually turned black although they had been a true light silver. However even in black Labradors there is black and black and I haven't seen these puppies when adult to know what shade of black they became, whether dull lead as I would expect or a true black. (Afterwards I saw one of this litter at a show and it was true black with really good undercoat). Talking of which, it is an odd thing that no one has done research, as far as I know, on the colour black in Labradors, nor yet in the various yellows, although the Americans at least have done the research in Livers, with the different shades of chocolate and the various eye-colours. But added to this in all three colours, black, yellow and liver, there is also the colour of the undercoat to take into consideration so it would be a big, extensive and difficult task and probably will never be done, unless by computer. All we know for certain, and not being a scientist I feel I may use the word where they wouldn't, is that black is dominant to yellow and that liver is recessive to black and acts as a dominant to yellow, and that is really all we need, yellow being recessive to everything. I also know, or think, that the stronger the black line the more you are apt to get dullish black which will tinge with dark brown when casting or out of condition. My blacks spend a lot of their time brown, which is a great nuisance, but which improves as soon as I get a fresh dose of yellow blood in, which produces a much brighter jet black. But colour is not everything and with this improvement in the brightness of the black comes a slightly different coat and a distinct lack of undercoat. I believe this is why one so seldom finds a good true undercoat when judging, as most of the black Labradors have yellow immediately behind them, even though yellows can have very good undercoats in some cases. But undercoat in yellows varies enormously, some having excellent undercoats, some absolutely none at all, but none seem to carry as good an undercoat as a true-bred black. The chocolates on the other hand usually have the best undercoat of all, at which I am not surprised because I think this colour probably descends among other things from the Chesapeake Bay Retriever which carries both this colour and also yellow (which they call dead-grass) and the Chesapeake always have tremendous undercoats. I can't remember ever judging a liver Labrador without being amazed at the density of the undercoat and also the complete distinctness between the two coats, which may perhaps be because the undercoat is always a contrasting colour, so one sees the distinction more easily than in a black where the undercoat is often black too. I have several times seen pure white undercoat on a black, indeed have owned one, also many mousy and even copper or brick-red undercoats on my own black dogs. But the biggest shock I had was at the Welsh Labrador Club Championship show where I spotted from the ringside a lovely bright-coloured yellow with the best top-coat you could possibly want on a Labrador and I was sure that under it would lie a super real old-fashioned undercoat. When this bitch was thrown out I called her across to me and asked if I could examine the coat. When I turned the top-coat back, it being a good solid tangerine golden. I had the shock of my life to see that the undercoat which covered this bitch all over was leaden black. This I am sure must be almost unique. Having dealt with the various unorthodox colours, some considered 'all right' by the older Labrador breeders, but some unwelcome and indeed obviously wrong, I will say a little about the recognized colours of today remembering that the standard says 'other whole colors of today remembering that the Standard says 'other whole colours permitted' (This has been deleted in the recently published 'new' (1986) Kennel Club Standard.) Starting with the black there is little to say except the blacker the bloodlines the more inclined to a brownish tinge when casting the coat, and also the heavier and more correct the undercoat the duller the black. The really jet-blacks seldom have much undercoat at all. But even the blacks with brownish tinge must never be marked like a black-and-tan Gordon Setter. With the 'brown' blacks when casting, they will be the very opposite and their heads, legs and tail will remain black, just the places where a black-and-tan dog is coloured red or tan. Silverish or purpley-brown puppies in the nest will turn black and are very common in black bloodlines. Grey or white thumb marks on the heels of the blacks always denote an excellent coat and very good type. I very much like these on my blacks and also look for and welcome the white roots to the hairs of my black top-coats, especially one-third of the way down the tail. Lady Howe wrote in Our Dogs, 'As for the mousy or grey colouring in puppies, this always denotes a typical Labrador coat. My Banchory Danilo had grey flanks and quarters when young. In the best strains the roots of the hair on the tail are often white.' Mr. J. C. Severn also writes, 'All the best Labradors I have known (black) have had a mousy undercoat and many of them show a large amount of grey at the root of their undercoat.' I must say that this is the coat I have always liked best in my own Mansergh blacks, although I have sometimes been told I am wrong, but with such authorities as I have quoted I stick to my guns that a Labrador may certainly have the white roots, the purpley or grey-black as a puppy and the mousy or contrasting undercoat. And I myself love the grey heels, this being a continuation of the undercoat. Now to yellows and here we have such a wide variation of shades and tones with vastly differing undercoat colouring, also pigment and eye-colour, that they need a study in themselves. Usually the true working people prefer the reds and golden-biscuits, but the show people and the pet-owners seem to like the light shaded creams. All of course come under the category yellow, never gold (the sign of ignorance) because the term golden was given over to the Golden Retrievers in 1925 to avoid confusion, whereupon all Labradors from cream to red become yellow. It seems that the yellow or buff puppies had turned up in otherwise black litters from fairy early Labrador days, indeed the portrait of Mrs. Josephine Bowes and 'Bernardine' which hangs in the Bowes Museum shows Bernardine to be almost certainly a typical yellow Labrador, painted circa 1848. The first actual mention of yellow puppies that I know of is in The Practical Dog Book by Edward C. Ash who says on p. 102 that 'In 1876 Dr. Bond Moore, an important breeder of Labradors, had a pair of puppies of a golden colour in a litter, a matter at that time of much interest.' So certainly the yellows were cropping up in black litters as early as the 1870s. Major Radclyffe was responsible for putting them on the map and they were taken up from his strain and his dog Ben of Hyde, or Hyde Ben, or even Radclyffe's Ben at the turn of the century and a decade or so after. The three names associated with the early development of the yellows are therefore 'Zelstone' (the Radclyffes), 'Knaid' (Major & Mrs. Wormald) and 'Braeroy' (Capt. & Mrs. MacPherson). All these three kennels stuck to the yellows, excluding the blacks, and were capable of producing yellows that could not only hold their own at Championship shows but could beat the very best black at the Trials. The yellows owe the three ladies. Audrey Radclyffe, Veronica Wormald and Mary MacPherson a tremendous debt of gratitude for thus establishing the ongoing strains of yellows that dominate the show scene today. It is significant that two of the six Dual Champions are yellows, Dual Ch. Knaith Banjo and Dual Ch. Staindrop Saighdear. Oddly enough Mrs. MacPherson was also responsible for one advent of the liver colour (or chocolate as it is now known), her bitch Braeroy Randy (yellow) producing Derry of Chiltonfoliant and another liver puppy in one litter. It seems that F.T. Ch. Haylers Defender was also able to produce livers and Miss Wills (now Mrs. Halstead of Metesford Labradors) had some that were his grandchildren. I don't know about the liver descendants of Haylers Defender, but I was told by Captain MacPherson that he always believed that there was a Chesapeake behind the livers they breed; and in Nancy Martin's splendid book Legends in Labradors, Mrs. MacPherson also hints at this, mentioning Western Reiver's sire 'Clyde' as being a possible source of Chesapeake blood, this being the very dog Captain MacPherson told me almost certainly contained the alien blood. In many writings of the earliest liver puppies, turned-back coats are mentioned which seems to ratify this. When I myself used the Braeroy line I bred a puppy (black) with a Chesapeake coat and general appearance, and when Mrs. MacPherson saw it she was not the slightest surprised but just said it was a throwback to its Chesapeake ancestor and that she herself had bred one or two like it, only yellow. It was generally taken for granted though, that the early liver colour in Labradors usually stemmed from the Pointers which at that time were commonly kenneled alongside the Labradors. This was held to account for their 'Ugly mugs', their yellow eyes and their lack of pigment. Indeed they were really ugly and no chance of taking on. But after World War Two, a change suddenly appeared, this coming from a Flatcoat cross which took place 'sub rosa' but deliberately. Now we started to get very attractive livers or chocolates and they turned up in some numbers. Very soon a very good type started to appear as the breeders unknowingly eliminated the feathering and the other Flatcoat traits, that unexpectedly to them, appeared in their litters, particularly the blacks. I remember Lady Joan Hill-Wood leaning over the balcony with me at the Crufts shortly after this saying sarcastically, 'Since when we have to cut the feathering and the breeching off our Labradors?' and laughing when I answered, 'We all know since when.' Well, neither she nor I were responsible for that bit of out-crossing, but the over-dark eyes and the feathering took a long time to breed out. However a very, very good Flatcoat dog had been used, indeed the best possible and apart from this nuisances and a slight change in temperament, little harm was done in the long run and quite a lot of good. But to consider the chocolates as pure Labradors is far from the truth, the colour coming from Pointers, the Chesapeakes and latterly the Flatcoats. Although the research in colour has not been done and probably never will be, we will have to stagger along without that help and usually we manage pretty well. What we do know is that two yellows don't produce black puppies and if they do you can bet your bottom dollar something is wrong; that to keep pigment in yellows you must occasionally introduce black blood however indirectly; that if you are going for livers you must not mate a liver to a yellow or you may get bad colours and pigment and light eyes, and you must keep introducing blacks to keep the colour, the pigment and the eyes reasonable. I will also add my corollary that by continually mating blacks to blacks you will get the brown tinge when the coat is about to change and that it will also be a nuisance because the black will at the best of times be matt and not a bright shiny jet. All this seems common sense and apart from the liver breeders I feel we can manage as we have done for years without further research. But as far as the dictum that the Labrador is a black dog, well it probably was once upon a time, but alas no one could say that now. |
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