NewsflareIt must be hard growing old as a dog.
No pension, scattered grandchildren, the inability to take up smoking a pipe, not having cool silver hair. You look pretty much the same as you did five years ago, you just can’t go fetch or dance on your feet in front of the panel of Britain’s Got Talent anymore.
For humans, ageing comes with its benefits: being able to judge other people without fear of physical consequence, falling asleep wherever you want and it looking cute, drinking in pubs alone and it looking charming, having cool silver or even white hair; wearing big silly glasses that say ‘yeah I don’t have any teeth left but you bet I’m gonna give you an extra £10 for your birthday this year’.
What we don’t necessarily have, except maybe for mobility scooters, is walkie wagons. Devices to take us from A to B with no effort made.
Now take a look at this golden retriever:
Look at that. Poor old Maggie can barely saunter past a few houses before she begins to limp and ultimately give up on walking, so her owner decided to cart her around in a tiny wagon instead.
The loving owner told UNILAD:
So I’m a professor at the University of Maryland. We have five golden retrievers and three of them are seniors who we rescued, including Maggie.
Maggie is almost 11 and has always had weaker legs, but just in the last week, she started having trouble going for walks. She can only make it about 50 meters before she limps and just sits down
But she loves walks and gets so excited when I go for the leashes. I couldn’t never walk her again, so I decided to get a wagon that was big enough to hold her so I could pull her around on her walking route.
There’s just something about golden retrievers isn’t there? Legend first had it golden retrievers were descended from Russian sheepdogs bought from a circus. In truth, the breed was developed in Scotland, at the highland estate of Sir Dudley Marjoribanks, later known as Baron Tweedmouth.
Tweedmouth is said to have bred animals of all kinds, trying to perfect different breeds. Tweedmouth’s breeding records from 1835 to 1890 show what he was aiming for: a skilled retriever with a keen nose, who would be more attentive to his human hunting companion than the setters and spaniels, which were used at the time for retrieving. He also wanted the dog to be loyal – which is kind of a given.
Tweedmouth took Nous home to Scotland, and in 1868 and 1871, bred him to Belle, a Tweed Water Spaniel.
Tweed Water Spaniels – now extinct sadly – were known for being eager retrievers in the hunting field, and massively calm and loyal in the home – AKA all the characteristics you see in golden retrievers.
So there you have it. Pretty interesting. Class dismissed.
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