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| This is the story of 21 interbred Labradors
from the United Kingdom. Actually it is only a small part of their story,
because most of it has been removed from the official registration files.
Obviously one didn't want the public to know that one's high ranking field
champions' bloodlines were mixed with those of Flatcoat Retrievers, Chesapeake
Bay Retrievers and Golden Retrievers. How silly, and how wrong one was.
. Daffy, Dazzle, Flap, Graceful Susan, Gypsum Pol Roger, Jolly Sam, Jubilee Daisy, Kirkmichael Don, Mat, Micklefield Juno, Ouida of Hale Barnes, Stourhead Nero and Woodspeen Judy - your story is short and no one knows who you are. You produced many champions, and for one or two generations they were registered, but we don't know what happened to their offspring after 1936, and how much of them we could find back in our present Labradors if we had access to the original files. . It looks like some British registrars of the 1920s and 1930s were inspired by their contemporary Joseph Stalin -- if there's something in history that you might find embarrassing, you just tear out the pages of the history textbooks, and see - it never happened! How lucky we are that some responsible breeders kept their own studbooks and didn't want to cooperate with the official registrars who fiddled their books. The pedigree of Buccleuch Virginia, for instance, gives us the opportunity to see what the official registrars left out, and some Labradors were brought to the United States - with their pedigrees - before the big clearout started. So despite the fact that the registration was obscured, and even if it's only a top of the iceberg, we still have some interesting descendants to look at, like Stourhead Gilda's, Horton Flo's, and Fairgirth Bell's. . The (usually self-proclaimed) authorities of the Labrador world may in their days have done great things for the breed in general, but they also deprived us from a reliable database. I'm not just talking about removing the connections with other breeds. Once you start fiddling the books - because of pride, money, friendship, whatever - the sky is the limit. However, with over a hundred diseases and defects common in the Labrador Retriever, Labrador breeders have only the past to learn from, and when this past is blurred by unrecorded or misleading facts, it is difficult to tell which breeding practices or theories are right or wrong. Dogs may be excluded from breeding wrongfully - which effects the breed in general - and dogs that should be excluded (if we only knew the facts) are not - which probably effects the breed even more. I think it is the duty of the breed clubs to repair, maintain and improve the Labrador databases with all possible means, and publish these databases on the internet, free for everyone to use. Because the more we know about our dogs, the more we are able to breed wisely and responsibly.  No descendants of FTW Banchory Polish registered.  No descendants of FTW Dunrainey Druid registered.  No descendants of GB FT CH Flashy registered.  No descendants of FTW Gilstair Sandy registered.  No descendants of FTW Hard Frost registered.  No descendants of FTW Langbourne Jenny registered.  No descendants of FTW Plover registered.  No descendants of FTW Warden Sprinkle registered.  No descendants of FTW Woodspeen Mona registered. I suspect that between 1920 and 1940, with the knowledge and approval of the owners, Labradors with interbred ancestors were systematically removed from the registration files. One way to re-enter the registration files with a "clean sheet" and build on the bloodlines was to enter such a dog as "non registered". His or her offspring would be registered, but the owner/breeder would be freed from the "tainted" past of such a dog.     26 years later we arrive at Honcho's Karma Chameleon, and you'll find Bigstone Taffy on Lookout Daisy's Babe's mother's side. (Not hard to find a yellow bitch between all these blacks.) If you study the names in the pedigree, you might already recognize some names from your own dog's pedigree.  With the pedigree of Lorken Frieda Run we finally arrived in the present time. Honcho's Karma Chameleon can be found at the very bottom of the pedigree. Now this is what you should be able to do: consulting the pedigrees of your Labradors, or those of the Labradors you are interested in. Databases should be trustworthy and as complete as possible. Thanks to the fact a Labrador was exported from the United Kingdom to the United States, we are able to track its roots all the way back to CH Darenth, a Flatcoat Retriever. And that's the way it should be.   From the 1970s all the way back to the 1940s: in Swinbrook Tan's pedigree we are looking for a bitch called Phillipine Diane, an ancestor of Cornbury Regent.  . Now we've come this far, why not take a tour via Lord Cairn's Smut (1895) and go all the way back to the very beginning of the first registered Labrador Retrievers?  Read George Padgett's book "Control of Canine Genetic Diseases" before you start jump to conclusions. And also read his article about Open Disease Registry. . |
