I finally had time to sit down and read this whole thread--what a nice history of some of our foundation goldens. Does anybody remember FC Sir Arthur (besides me, I mean)? Ray Sommers trained him and I was lucky enough to meet them both while we lived in WI. What a clown! He'd spin circles going to the line, on the line, off the line. I never saw a dog spin like that again until Joe Boatright's lab and he was just as exciting to watch as Sir Arthur.
Shortly after we moved to WI, we met a fellow who had a CH bitch by Sir Arthur out of Roxanne of Arborvita and she was a beautiful hunting machine. My husband came home one day saying he'd found the nice people who owned the female the Loomis' had gotten their dog and they had a litter of puppies and even better, they had a Christmas tree farm! Well, long story short I went from, "We can't afford a dog.", to "How much are they?" HOLY MOSES....a hundred dollars???? For a dog???? to "We can go look at them, but we cannot, under any circumstances, afford a dog." We don't have any place to keep it, you only own a 30-06--not a shotgun (at least I knew that much), I went on and on. My husband said, I can get a gun--they're not expensive (insert Belgium Browning) & besides, it'll save us money, I'll be able to hunt pheasants and chukkars and put food on the table...............sigh. Do you know what happens when you see a litter of golden puppies for the very first time? First they run up to you and wiggle all over the place, then they grab your shoe laces and pull them apart, then when you bend down to retie your shoes, they jump up and lick you all over the place! Well, we bought a pup & paid the breeders $25.00 a month for 4 months. Mr. Williams, the owner of the stud, Stilrovin Luke Adew, was sending his pro down to take first pick. So we chose ours and a second just in case. The pro said he would take the entire litter (not uncommon) and see which ones were worth training. The breeder told him we had aleady given her a deposit, so he could have all of them but one. He took his first pick (thankfully NOT our pick) and took the rest of the litter. We named our pup "Rip" after the first U.S. CH Rip. We knew less than nothing about training, but Don Loomis belonged to a club called W.A.F.T.C. so off my husband and the puppy went to learn how to hunt birds. At a picnic trial, Rip couldn't find the first bird and my husband was very disappointed, but a nice gentleman came up to him and suggested a few things including not to rush the puppy and then invited us up to his place to train. He had a place at Random Lake and his name was Charlie Morgan. Then we met Ray Sommers and Dr. Lardy, and a whole bunch of trainers, owners, and retrievers. Rip ran 3 Derbies, made the Derby list, ran 3 Quals and was QAA and then, a fellow that lived down the road from us named Del Glodowski said Rip was quite nice looking and since he showed dogs on weekends, he'd like to put Rip in the ring.......well, before we knew it, Rip had I don't know how major reserves out of the puppy class and was well on his way to being a really nice dog. Unfortunately, my husband lost his job and although we received an extremely good offer to purchase Rip, we just couldn't sell him. So he grew old in California and that was that. But, he got us started in goldens. Luke Adew became a FC/AFC, Roxanne of Arborvita placed in a trial. We met and trained with the Venerables, Christiansen's, Vern & Ethel Weber and a lot of really nice goldens (and an occasional lab, too). Someplace I have a couple of old F.T. catalogues from WI. with all
those wonderful old dogs and their owners.
I remember the goldens were darker red, good sized and some were heavier boned than many of the goldens today.
Suzanne B