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The golden retriever was developed as a strain of wavy-coated retriever in Inverness-shire Scotland at 1st Baron Tweedmouth's estate, Guisachan ("place of the firs" in Gaelic). Baron Tweedmouth, whose given name was Dudley Coutts Marjoribanks, was a Liberal Scottish MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed. He purchased the estate in Inverness-shire to improve domestic stock, including Aberdeen-Angus cattle and to produce a strain of retriever that had was biddable in temperament and yellow in color. His desire to produce a yellow retriever was a real change in convention among British sportsmen, who generally preferred to breed black retrievers. Black retrievers were believed to be hardier and more easily trained than the other colors. However, Marjoribanks had a plan to start a yellow line of retrievers that could work as well as the black ones.

Key in his breeding program was the decision to use a regional breed in his cross. The Tweed water spaniel was known in Scotland an excellent retriever. It was known for its excellent nose and ease of training. It was also known for its unusual coat and appearance. Unlike the Irish and English breeds of water spaniel, the Tweed water spaniel had a short, wavy coat. It had pendulous ears, but the ears were not as long as those of the other water spaniels. It also came in a wide range of colors, from a creamy yellow color to tawny red as well as liver brown. In the vernacular of the day, all of these dogs were called "liver," which makes things somewhat confusing. Today, "liver" is always a brown color with brown skin pigment on skin around the eyes, lips, and nose, usually accompanied with yellow or amber eyes. In Labradors, this color is called chocolate. In flat-coats, this color is called liver. In those days, all Tweed water spaniels were liver, even if they were yellow or tawny in coat color.

Baron Tweedmouth found a yellow wavy coated dog at Brighton that belonged to a cobbler. A cobbler had no real use for a retriever dog, because it was not common for people of more modest means to have access to estates to hunt game birds. The dog, named "Nous," Greek for "mind or intellect" used in English to denote "common sense," was the only yellow out of an all black litter of wavy-coated retrievers. Wavy-coats were an early breed of retriever derived from the St. John's water dog of Newfoundland, some variety of setter, and possibly collies and water spaniels. The breed is considered ancestral to both the golden retriever and the flat-coat,

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