Another thread is talking about the video of a long ago field trial... and one mentioned how surprised she was at the number of goldens! Yes goldens were once big players in the sport! Unfortunately they have lost a lot of ground... Is this to poor breeding on the part of the golden group or better breeding on the part of the lab group? Good campfire discussion.
At the beginning of US field trials I've read somewhere that Goldens were considered the superior water dog. How times have changed!
Why the change? There are probably several reasons.
Some years back, it was true that more people bred Labs for field work than for dog shows. That may still hold true. Someone else will have to track down the stats on that. WRT dog shows, fanciers seem to wreak much havoc with long-coated breeds ... the setters come to mind. My theory is that Goldens are too pretty for their own good
Focusing on their coat and how it could be made even prettier seems to have played a role in the Golden attracting the attention of many people who valued the appearance v. purpose.
The tolerant temperament of Labs and Goldens made them both popular as family dogs first; hunters, second. The next step was that those who DID want a working retriever did NOT usually want the higher upkeep of the Golden coat as the coat evolved into a higher-maintenance realm. Even our fieldier Goldens can be higher maintenance than a Lab. (I'm not saying "high-maintenance", but just more than a Lab with no feathering at all.)
So, it may be just a matter of numbers: that there are more Lab breeders interested in purpose than dog shows.
Then we can get into the fact that Golden people may be less willing to send their dogs to pro trainers than Lab people. The percentage of successful field trial dogs who are fully owner-trained is very small. If you own Goldens, you may very well have a very emotional attachment to your individual dog. This could explain the relatively large numbers of Goldens (though still outnumbered by Labs) in hunt tests.
Those numbers decline, though, as you move to Master which is a level more difficult for the owner-trainer to do on their own. The e-collar is a valuable and sophisticated training tool. Many owner-trainers just don't have the ability to use it correctly. In today's world, very few dogs get a MH title who have been trained withoOUT the e-collar.
So ... the differences may be a numbers game. More people who want to breed Labs for field purposes, than there are Golden breeders who do so. We can't forget that the Goldens who do get those FC and AFC titles do so by excelling over some very good Labs
. That means that the Golden breeders who do focus on field traits aren't doing so badly.
I read somewhere here on RTF, and it's worth remembering in your darkest moments: The success rate in field trials is quite low. A lot of defeats v. very few ribbons. Every time you go home without a ribbon, there are also a LOT of Labs to keep you company
We never see how many dogs are washed out v. the number who succeed. It might be safe to guess that if many more Labs are purchased for field trials, there are also many more who don't succeed. Just a matter of numbers.
I do NOT believe that there are fewer Goldens for the reason often cited: the tests are designed for Labs. I think that's a cop-out. Both breeds are physically capable of doing the tests. Both breeds are intelligent enough to learn the concepts (even as those concepts have evolved into greater complexity over time). Good field Goldens can compare in drive and birdiness to Labs. The key, I think, is presentation of the information. Remember, Einstein was considered a dolt in school ... until he proved himself to be a genius
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were both geniuses with computers ... so we ended up with MS-DOS and also with Apple operating systems. Great minds may not always think alike?
I apologize for rambling thoughts ...