The kennel book:
a tooled leather register.
The Duke of Buccleuch's kennel book was not published. It is a private register, kept at Drumlanrig Castle in Scottish Dumfriesshire, described by those who have seen it as a tooled leather volume documenting every mating and every litter in the kennel from 1839 onwards. Lord George Scott, who was the sixth Duke's son, had direct access to it and cites it in his 1936 book. Graham Cox, journalist for Country Illustrated, consulted it in 2006 while preparing an article on the revival of the Buccleuch kennel. What is known of its contents comes from these two sources.
From 1839 to 1935:
almost a century of documented selection.
The first field trial without Labrador:
there were wavy-coated, flat-coated, curly-coated.
"The first field trial for retrievers, run in 1899, featured five types of dog, including wavy-coated, flat-coated and curly-coated retrievers. But the labrador retriever was not among them. More than a decade later, in the last full season before World War One, some 14 field trial meetings were held. Astonishingly, of the 247 dogs entered, 179 were labradors."Graham Cox, The Duke's Labradors, Country Illustrated, Anniversary 2006, pp. 90–93
This passage — drawn from the direct consultation of the kennel book and the Buccleuch field records — is one of the clearest in the history of the Labrador. In 1899, four years before the official recognition of the Labrador as a breed, British field trials had wavy-coated, flat-coated and curly-coated retrievers as separate categories. The Labrador was not yet classified as such. In less than fifteen years, from 1899 to 1914, the Labrador went from non-existence as a competition category to dominating 72% of field trial entries. It was not a new breed — it was simply the one that had finally got a name.
"Put down — useless."
Uncompromising selection.
The Buccleuch kennel book was not a sentimental register. Every dog that did not meet the kennel standards had a single entry in the "remarks" column: "Put down — useless." It was a systematic and merciless selection, conducted for decades by Lord George Scott — the same man who in 1936 would write the book on the origins of the Labrador. This uncompromising selection towards the functional type — not the show type — is the reason why Buccleuch blood remained so dominant in working Labrador history: in 1904 Munden Single, the first Labrador to take a card in a field trial, was almost pure Buccleuch and Malmesbury breeding. In 1906 Flapper, the first Labrador placed. In 1911 Peter of Faskally, the first Championship composed entirely of Labradors.