CHAPTER ONE
The Labrador Retriever-Who is he?
By Richard A. Wolters
The Labrador is the king of retrievers. He may not be the handsomest
or the strongest, but he is the king. He is intelligent but not
cunning; he's lovable but not soft. The Labrador retriever is
loyal but not a one-man dog. He's gentle but not a dog to be
backed against the wall. He's a romping fun fellow but won his
crown as an honest worker.
The Lab is as much at home on your bed as he is calmly sitting
next to an Illinois pit blind undaunted by a cutting wind. He's
the waterfowler's first choice, but he is also a fine upland
hunter. He'll give you the sportiest woodcock hunting possible
in Maine, and he'll unravel the tricks of Iowa's pheasants. He
may not be the fastest swimmer, but if you send him for a crippled
goose on the Eastern shore, he won't quit. He's truly the hunter's
dog, yet when he comes into this world he doesn't have a hateful
gene in his body.
Versatility is the hallmark of the Lab. Police work? No problem.
The London Bobbies use Labs all the time. Leading the blind?
He outperforms the breed that started the business.
Helping conservationists? He works side by side with game wardens
in every state and with scientists in Canada. But the Lab's real
conservation efforts are with Harry, Bill, and Joe, the duck
hunters, who need his help to protect the bag by making every
downed duck count. Ask any waterfowler about Labs, and you will
hear stories of courage, persistence, loyalty, and just plain
smarts. He can also tell you how the Lab compares with other
retrievers: "When a game warden comes around to your blind,
the Chesapeake will try to tear his arm off, a Golden will lick
his face, but a Lab will show him where you hid the extra ducks
or where the bag of corn is kept." |
Thanks to Countrysport Press we offer you a chapter
from A Dog For All Seasons available from them or on Guldans.com
Mallard, canvasback, wood duck, blue-winged teal, or even
merganser-the kind of duck makes no difference, nor does it make
any difference what flyway he's on. The Lab is as good a worker
in Oregon as he is in Louisiana. He can learn the ways of the
oak swamp hunters in the Ozarks, run the shoreline and toll the
ducks in Nova Scotia, sit quietly in a punt off Chincoteague,
scan the skies from the rocks on Long Island Sound, work from
a stilt blind on California lakes, or walk at heel in Central
Park. And that is really the point with this dog: He can be taught
anything that is possible for a dog to learn. He takes to training
as easily as any breed and he laps it up. Both in America and
in England, he has proven to be such a good worker, so biddable
and with such a dependably docile temperament, generation after
generation, that it is no wonder the Lab has become the most
popular dog in the United States.
|
