Shadow was my second Golden and the first we got from Margaret Woods – one of the most reputable breeders in England – whereupon I’m absolutely grateful and pretty proud too, because she always takes a very close look at her puppy-buyers.
My husband and I (sounds like the Queen at a dinner speech) met Margaret Woods at a Championship-Show in Kelso and simply asked if it is possible to visit her in a week or so. She made it possible. She kindly showed us all her dogs and both of us fell in love with Inga – Shadow’s Mum to be – what a pretty dog, what a lovely temperament. I told Margaret right away that I would be over the moon if I might get a puppy out of Inga’s next litter. Well, it seemed, we didn’t misbehave all the time, because we might!
I came back to her house in 1994 and overwhelmed to take Shadow home. He was just the puppy I wanted. And Shadow fullfilled every expectation I have dreamed of. Such a lovely temperament, always friendly with an enormous will to please and miles away from being dominant. Shadow wasn’t very big but his construction was absolutely balanced, good proportions and an outstanding charisma. Most of the time he was the darkest dog in the ring but very often the most impressive and most handsome or just the best. Frank Kane said in his evaluation: „A real honest old-fashioned type.“
No wonder that he became German Junior Champion rather quickly, thereafter German Champion Club and German Champion VDH and Luxembourg Champion. On the side he passed the gun dog test with excellence.
By the way, he earned his champion-titles under the Crème de la Crème of English judges: John Clark, Heather Morris, Joan Tudor, Frank Kane, Margaret Balaam, Sandra Birkin-Green, George Hennessy, Barbara Mills, Barbara Keighley, Barbara Gell, Richard Edwards, Val Burns, Catherine Zingg, Brenda Phillips, Brenda Hutchison, Maurice Shortman, Maureen McKenna, Danny Pritchard, Ron Hare, Henrik Frykstrand (ok, he is Swedish, but nobody is perfect) – they all judged him, however, not everybody gave him first place, but he never ended worse than fourth place.
Representative for all, here one of his evaluations, given by Mr. John Clark who made him „Best of Breed“ – out of junior class at the tender age of 14 months:
„Excellent type, well balanced head with good expression,
good depth to muzzle and foreface, excells in front,
neck and shoulder, short coupled, well balanced body,
good strength and angulation in hindquarters,
moved and handled well.“
Only one person wasn’t all too happy about Shadow’s success – guess who … Of course my „not-having-a-clue-of-nothing“-hubby. Why? Carelessly he promised to me that if Shadow and Cracker would win their class and had to compete for best dog, he would show one of them. Well, both won and he decided to take Cracker, because this experienced stage hog could handle showing all by himself. Well, he lost – since then he never ever entered a show ring again, he is still pissed.
Such a brillant dog should pass on his genes – we thought so too, but the GRC in persona of the main breed warden didn’t let him with flimsy arguments. However, it’s a long time ago, so it’s useless arguing about it now. However, it was an outragous injustice, at least it has been repaired ten years later. and was aufzuklären. Aber es war ein Unrecht, dass erst fast zehn Jahre später korrigiert wurde. So it happened that Shadow produced a litter at very old age, when he was 12. That’s why we called him the Charlie Chaplin among the Goldens. But this litter was outstanding, it was our J-Litter. I kept two pups out of this litter, a boy and a girl – Sunny and Jewel. And who follows up my breed history, can see that these two produced a lot of grandchildren for Shadow.
And I still have frozen semen of Shadow and I am pretty sure that I’ll make good use of it some day.
