Water Dog

One of the joys of owning a Labrador Retriever is watching her in the water. Now that she is 5 1/2 months old, Hannah has found the courage to venture into deeper water and swim to retrieve sticks. Water play is done with exuberance. She splashes through the shallows until she reaches a drop off at which point she launches her body into the air and starts swimming. After grabbing the stick she returns to me, dropping it nearby, her body taut and prepared to rocket back into the water to retrieve again......and again......and again.

The story behind the Labrador Retriever is fascinating. The web site ALL LABS gives a brief history of the breed.

"The Labrador Retriever must be from Labrador, right? Not so, however. From all accounts Labs originated in Newfoundland. The name assignment may have resulted from a geographical association since Labrador is situated just northwest of Newfoundland and the sub-arctic waters of the Labrador Current flow down the east coast of insular Newfoundland. The name may also be explained by the origin of the word labrador, Portuguese for yeoman or laborer and the Spanish word for workmen, labradores. A related connection could be the village in northern Portugal called Castro Laboreiro where the dogs that guard livestock bear a striking resemblance to Labrador Retrievers.

There is a bit of mystery about the ancestors of the Labrador, appropriate perhaps given the amazing versatility of the breed. After all, how could one dog be so adept at such a wide variety of jobs, be capable of working under very harsh conditions and also have one of the friendliest personalities around? From the men who began to use the Newfoundland region for fishing in the mid to late 15th century, a rough and often seedy sort, to the aristocratic English gentlemen who refined and preserved the breed in the 19th century, the people responsible for the development of the lab were themselves a remarkably diverse group.

The fishermen used dogs to retrieve fish that fell off hooks and to help haul in swimming lines or fishing nets. These dogs needed to be eager to please, strong swimmers and small enough to haul in and out of the two man " Dory" type boats. They needed to have short, water repellent dense coats that could withstand very cold water and wouldn't ball up with ice or bring excess water onboard. Onshore, as temporary settlements gave way to more permanent ones, a retrieving dog would have been a very useful hunting companion. The St. John's area of Newfoundland was settled predominantly by Englishmen who brought these working dogs to England through Poole Harbor, Dorset, the hub of the Newfoundland fishing trade. These St. John's dogs became the most prized sporting dogs for the gentry who could afford to maintain kennels for controlled breeding.

Without written records from the earliest days to detail which dogs came from where and to whom they were bred, we can only speculate about the ancestors of these St. John's dogs. The black St. Hubert's hound from France, working water dogs from Portugal, old European pointer breeds and dogs belonging to the native Indians have all been suggested as possible predecessors. Certainly some mixture of these or others is logical since tradesmen from around the world frequented Newfoundland for several centuries, plenty of time to develop breeds with the desired working traits. Two distinctly different breeds resulted, the larger longer haired dog used for hauling that became the Newfoundland we know today and the smaller shorter coated retriever that led to our present day labs."