Oshie loves rolling around in the grass. It is probably one of his favorite things to do outside. Of course when we had the dusting of snow a week ago he couldn’t help but roll in it. The result was a wet and muddy Golden who needed a bath. So after his bath Oshie was ready for a little pampering.
Due to the crazy amount of fur that Oshie has, air drying can take a long time so we usually speed the process up using Nancy’s hair dryer. We take this opportunity to get a thorough check of his body for any abnormalities and to get a good brushing done. Using the dryer also helps prevent wet hair from tangling and matting in places like his armpits. Here is a short video of Oshie completely enjoying the salon experience.
You Can ignore the video intro. The VLOG is has already been posted 🙂
I have decided to start posting facts/history about Golden Retrievers every week for as long as I can find facts to post! I hope you all enjoy it and maybe learn an interesting thing or two along the way!
Origin of The Golden Retriever
The Golden Retriever breed was born in the Scottish Highlands in the late 1800’s. The founding of the breed is credited to Dudley Marjoribanks (picture below) who was later known as Lord Tweedmouth. Quite the name, right?
Lord Tweedmouth was an avid hunter and owned an estate in Scotland called Guisachan where he kept his hunting dogs. On a trip to Brighton England he came across a cobbler who had been given a yellow wavy-coated retriever as payment. This was the only yellow puppy from the litter and Lord Tweedmouth purchased him, brought him to Guisachan and named him Nous.
Nous and the Lords Gamekeeper.
Good old Dudley…I mean Lord Tweedmouth, was very interested in the breeding quality of his livestock and dogs. His goal was to create the ultimate retriever, one that would be perfect for the Scottish weather and terrain. He decided the best way to achieve this goal was to breed Nous with his Tweed Water Spaniel, Belle (tweed water spaniels are an extinct breed).
This painting is of the extinct Tweed Spaniel.
The combination resulted in a litter of yellow pups which would become the base for the breed as we know it today. Lord Tweedmouth also mixed in a few wavy and flat coated retrievers as well as a red setter with the descendants of Nous and Belle and he predominantly kept the yellow dogs in order to further his line. The results are the Goldens you see today!
Only fitting to use an image of Oshie in front of an Estate and wearing a bow tie when discussing Lords, right?
Golden Retrievers have a soft mouth. That might seem like a weird statement to make because when you look at a dogs mouth you see a big floppy tongue and a bunch of large hard teeth. What I mean by this is that Golden Retrievers are able to carry delicate items in their mouth without damaging them. This is one of the characteristics that makes them a great retriever. If you are a hunter you wouldn’t want your retriever to bring back a mangled bird would you?
We were well aware of this and had even heard the claims that they could carry and egg in their mouth without breaking it. Recently on social media we had seen a few videos of owners testing this on their beloved Goldies with success. Now we don’t doubt that they do have soft mouths but we wanted to see if Oshie was capable of completing this challenge. We suspected he might but were also prepared for him to break the egg. Below is the video we made of Oshie attempting the challenge. He gave it his best ha-ha.
Jesse
Nancy
Oshie's World 
Recent Comments