Читать книгу Labrador: The Story of the World’s Favourite Dog - Ben Fogle, Ben Fogle - Страница 10

In 1999, I had been languishing in the offices of Tatler magazine in London and I was now looking for an escape. A way out. I wanted adventure. I was 24 and still living at home. I wanted an opportunity.

At that time the BBC were looking for people to be marooned on a deserted island in the Outer Hebrides for a year, beginning in January 2000. The project, Castaway, would later become one of the first reality shows to be broadcast in Britain. I applied and was chosen as one of 36 people to be shipwrecked on the Isle of Taransay for a year as part of a social experiment to see if we could create a fully self-sufficient community.

We reared our own livestock and grew our own crops. We built a slaughterhouse, a school and our living accommodation.

Each of us castaways had been asked to choose a luxury item that we could take with us. One couple had chosen a bed, another asked for a piano. Someone even opted for a home-brewing kit.

A dog. That was what I’d take. My own dog. A puppy.

Until that moment in my life I had led a relatively selfish existence. The previous 24 years had largely been about me. I had never had to think about anyone else but myself; the family pets were still the responsibility of my parents and I had never had to do an early morning walk with a hangover, or worry about a late night because the dogs were hungry.

This would be the moment that I made the sacrifice and took on a canine responsibility of my own.

But what breed?

I had grown up with Golden Retrievers; I liked Deer Hounds but they were too big; I liked Newfoundlands but they were too hairy; I liked Pugs but they had too many health problems. To be honest, I would have been happy with most breeds, but in reality there was only ever one breed of dog I ever really truly wanted: a Labrador.

Why a Labrador? Well, that is a complicated one, and it will take more than a chapter to explain.

Growing up above a veterinary clinic, I had more than my fair share of encounters with a wide variety of breeds. To be honest, growing up, I loved all dogs – irrelevant of breed, but I knew three Labradors in my childhood, two of which belonged to my late friend Alice Benkert. Alice lived in Esher, and the two dogs, Poppy and Oscar, would come with her parents to collect her from school. I would spend hours with them. I remember the time we came back to her home and the dogs had found several boxes of freezer bags that they had scattered like confetti around the kitchen.

The other Labrador belonged to an English teacher at my school, called PJ. He had a beautiful black dog and a Land Rover – and I coveted both. Now I think about it, I wonder whether getting to know Labradors at the same time that I went to boarding school and was separated from my childhood Golden Retrievers was the seed of my obsession. I cried for a year when I left home. My homesickness was debilitating. It wasn’t just that I missed my home, but also the dogs, Liberty and Lexington.

Lib and Lex, as we knew them, were my best friends and my confidants. They were what really made our house a home. They soothed and settled me. I decorated the walls around my bed at school with photographs of the dogs, but that only made things worse. I would sob into my pillow each night, wishing, longing for that warm, hairy body stretched out on my bed.

When my parents finally understood how much I missed the dogs, they decided it would be a good idea if they came along with us when it was time to drop me off at school. But the fleeting appearance of Lib and Lex only made matters worse – tears would stream down my cheeks as I watched my parents drive away, a small tuft of blond fur visible through the back window.

I’m getting homesick just thinking about it!

Lib and Lex were the first constants I really knew in my life. Both my parents would come and go, depending on work commitments, but the dogs were always there – tail wagging at the door, tongue lickingly happy to see me.

Throughout the term I would find their blond hairs stuck to my clothes. A reminder of my two friends waiting for me at home. Boarding school was the only time in my life when I was forcibly separated from dogs and it was then that I promised myself I would get my own dog at the first opportunity. Young naivety assured me this would be on the day that I left school, but then travel and girls got in the way and my plans got put on a back burner.

Until now. This was the perfect opportunity. The problem was that neither the production company nor the BBC wanted me to take a dog. To be honest, I never really understood why. I think it might have had something to do with the landowner who was leasing the island. While there weren’t many ground-nesting birds on the island of Taransay, there was plenty of livestock.

The makers of the show argued that there were already three dogs, all Collies, coming along, and that a fourth dog would tip the balance. Not only would it be a drain on our limited resources, but it would also affect the fragile human-to-dog ratio.

I set about on a campaign to change their mind. I found as many cute pictures of Labrador puppies as I could and then got my father to draft a letter outlining the human benefits of having a puppy within the community.

We argued that a puppy would be a cohesive addition, helping to bond strangers and bringing peace and harmony to the newly created community. Bringing 36 men, women and children together in the extreme circumstances of a windswept, uninhabited Scottish island was bound to create tensions but, we argued, the presence of a young puppy could help to diffuse any emerging conflict and arguments. Maybe that’s why they didn’t want the puppy …

I promised that I would train the puppy to be a working dog so that she would be an asset to the community. I was sure she could be trained to work with the sheep. And as for a drain on resources, I argued that she could quite reasonably live off scraps. She would be a Labrador, after all. They eat anything, I reasoned.

I’m not sure what clinched the deal for me, but the programme makers eventually relented and I set about finding my perfect puppy. A Labrador, of course.

Dad offered to help. For more than a week, we toured the country looking at litter after litter.

We drove as far north as the Scottish borders to look at puppies. Too thin, too fat – none was quite right. Eventually, detective work led us to a tiny kennel near Heathrow airport. There we saw a litter of black Labradors that stuck in my mind, in particular one of the puppies who was the last to be picked, probably because she was a rather scrawny-looking thing with a large swollen eye.

‘Wasp sting,’ the woman explained.

I examined her carefully.

‘No thanks,’ I said, rather heartlessly, handing her back.

As we pulled away from the yard, I caught a glimpse of her sad, dark eyes. Why was I turning my back on this lone pup? Suddenly I wasn’t sure, but as with love, I wanted to be certain. How would I know she was the one?

For the next few days I couldn’t stop thinking about her. It had been more than a week and I was certain she’d be gone.

‘She’s still here,’ said the woman down the phone.

I raced back. We pulled up to the house and were led into the living room, where the puppy was alone. She had been weaned from her mother, which meant separating the dogs. Immediately she ran up to me and licked my face. The swelling on her eye had subsided and, away from her greedy siblings, she was now much rounder, with a bulging pink belly.

She gazed up at me with her hazel eyes as I ran my fingers through her thick black hair. I nuzzled my nose behind her ear and inhaled her scent. It was instant love. I had always been told that I’d find her, and now I really had found ‘the one’. I named her Inca.

I held her close as we walked out into the crisp winter night, but as we approached the car I heard a commotion in the background.

‘Get back here!’ cried a voice.

The puppy’s mother had broken free and came bounding over. She jumped up and licked Inca clean across the face, then lifted her ear. I am not one to over-anthropomorphise our animals, but I swear she was wishing her luck. She was whispering something into that little dog’s ear, and I’d like to think she was telling her to look after me.

As quickly as she had appeared, Inca’s mother vanished back into the darkness. Her owner looked on in astonishment, a tear in her eye.

And so began a friendship that would change things forever. Little did I realise then how much this little dog would form, shape and create my life. She would change it in ways I never thought possible. The story of Inca is, ultimately, the story of me.

Inca and I became inseparable. I was still living in my childhood bedroom in my parents’ house, and I can vividly remember setting up her little crate at the foot of my bed, feeling both fear and excitement at the journey that lay ahead.

My life of blissful selfishness was over and a new one of selflessness was beginning. I genuinely think that those two words separate dog owners from non-dog owners.

I guess, on the face of it, it is a little strange that we invite this hairy animal into our homes. We share our lives with a creature that was once undomesticated and wild. I’ve always been fascinated as to why we keep dogs. Why we love dogs. Why we mourn our dogs when they go. Of course, it varies from culture to culture and from country to country. Some argue it is a sign of development; the more developed a country the higher the number of pet dogs. The sharp spike in the number of pet dogs in China, with its emerging middle-class population, seems to back that up.

By the very late nineteenth century in Britain, the popularity of the Labrador was on the rise and it wasn’t long before the Royals got in on the act, in a connection with the breed that has endured right up to the present day.

The first Labrador kennels were established at Sandringham by King Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, in 1879 to house a hundred dogs, and the Sandringham kennels and the Labradors that are bred there have become firm favourites of the Royal Family as a whole. In fact, it may come as a surprise to many that the Queen is as fond of her Labradors as she is of her infamous Corgis.

In many ways the Corgis are the public face of the Queen’s canine companions, but the Labrador is the private love of her life. I was once told a story that the Queen has several Land Rovers custom-made with windscreen wipers on the inside. Apparently these were specifically adapted for her Labradors, who have a tendency to steam cars up from the inside out.

The Queen takes a very great interest in the Sandringham kennels. Since her accession to the throne in 1952, the breeding programme there has gone from strength to strength, culminating in the training of five Field Trial Champions. All the puppies born at Sandringham are named personally by the Queen and are registered at the Kennel Club with the prefix Sandringham.

At any one time, the kennels are home to about 20 dogs of all ages, including Labradors and Cocker Spaniels – ranging from the older and more experienced gundogs used by members of the Royal Family during the shooting season to the younger dogs under training as gundogs.

In addition to providing dogs for the Royal Family, the kennels also supply the Estate gamekeepers with working Labradors and Spaniels.

In a bout of hopeful optimism I sent a note to Her Majesty’s equerry asking if it would be possible to visit the Queen’s Labrador kennels at Sandringham. I was politely informed that the kennels are extremely private and that a visit would be impossible. While the Corgis are frequently photographed at the Queen’s side, her Labradors are rarely seen and it appeared that was the way she wanted it to remain.

Records of the breed were kept by the Buccleuch estate in Scotland at around the same time that Edward VII was beginning his Labrador breeding programme, and it is these that note the arrival of two chocolate puppies or ‘liver pups’ in 1890. Could these have been the progenitors for the future of chocolate Labradors? The royal household would undoubtedly have given the liver pups the ultimate royal seal of approval.

But while the Labrador was finally establishing itself on our shores, across the Atlantic a problem was looming that threatened the strength and integrity of the breed in Britain. In 1885 the Newfoundland government, worried about the number of dogs in the region, passed the Sheep Protection Act which gave local government the right to impose a dog licensing tax as well as the right to prohibit dogs completely.

Inevitably, dog importations were affected. Colonel Peter Hawker wrote in the Instructions to Young Sportsmen that, ‘Poole was, till of late years, known to be the best place to buy Newfoundland dogs; either just imported or broken in; until they became more scarce, owing (the sailors observe) to the strictness of those tax gatherers.’

The 1885 Act was meant to encourage sheep raising by reducing the number of potential predators, but the result was to kill the Labrador export trade. The Quarantine Act of 1895 created another barrier to the importing of dogs. The Act prohibited dogs from entering Great Britain without a licence and without first undergoing a strict six-month quarantine to prevent the introduction of rabies.

The future of the Labrador hung in the balance.

Between 1890 and 1930 the multiple taxes, restrictions and paperwork meant no new dogs were imported to Britain and the results were quickly felt. This was the moment when ‘breed mixing’ began. Some breeders began mixing Labradors with Setters and Pointers. ‘Bearing in mind the high qualities attributed to pure Labradors, it is somewhat strange that the breed should have been allowed to degenerate by the various crosses of Setter and Spaniel blood,’ wrote Hugh Dalziel in his 1897 publication, British Dogs, Volume III, referring to new problems such as a hard mouth and sulky temper.

Within the tight circle of enthusiasts there was a move to preserve the purity of the breed. In 1903 the Labrador Retriever was recognised by the Kennel Club. In 1904, it was granted breed status and listed separately as a member of the Gundog Group. The breed standard was written, and it was almost identical to the one that holds sway today.

During the first decade of the twentieth century, Labrador Retrievers rose to prominence in the show ring and in field trials, and were also much favoured gundogs. By 1913, they were so well entrenched in the world of dog ownership that their qualities as working dogs were causing an emotive debate. The criticism that was voiced that they could be a ‘bit hard in the mouth’ was queried by Frank Townend Barton in his authoritative volume, Gun Dogs. The ideal retriever is a ‘soft-mouthed’ dog, a fetcher which picks up game softly but firmly to bring back birds that are fit for the table. Dogs that unnecessarily drop, crunch on, chew or even eat the bird before delivery to the handler are considered ‘hard-mouthed’.

‘If the Labrador possesses the qualities assigned to it by James Craw (at one time gamekeeper at Hirsel and Netherby), viz sagacity, stamina, perseverance, quickness and nose, then no other variety can come up to the Labradors,’ he wrote. ‘The only fault that he had to find with some of them – a fault common to all other varieties of retriever – was that they were a bit hard in the mouth. Gamekeepers and shooting men required a dog that could retrieve birds and game without piercing the skin with their teeth. I have always thought Labradors have one of the softest of bites; indeed, I have even seen Labradors carry fresh, unboiled eggs in their mouths while running.

Controversy, however, has frequently arisen concerning this matter, but supporters often point out that this trait spans the retriever group as a whole. Sometimes hunger just takes over.

Townend Barton reasoned ‘the Labrador was one of the best dogs in existence for a gamekeeper, most of which like their dogs to look ‘well and fit’ at the opening of the shooting season, without needing to devote much attention to them during the busy time, which necessarily precedes it on estates where hand-rearing of pheasants is carried on to any extent.’

Barton gives his ‘strong recommendation of the breed to shooting men’ on the eve of the First World War. The sixth Earl of Malmesbury recalls the estate keeper, Mr Beech, being called up into the Royal Artillery and ‘… the [Labrador] bitch he left behind pined so much that she sadly died. As a child I just remember her. She was the last of the direct descendants of the dogs imported in 1823.’

In the middle of the war, in 1916, the Labrador Retriever Club was founded by Lord Knutsford (then the Honourable Arthur Holland-Hibbert) and Lady Howe (then Mrs Quintin Dick), with a Mr T. W. Twyford of Staffordshire, to champion the breed, and Labs suddenly became the fashion. In 1916 the club authored the first Labrador Retriever standard. In the 1920s and 30s, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth promoted Labradors at shows through their kennel, and the King entered dogs in Crufts. In 1938, King George became Patron of the Labrador Retriever Club. In 1952, on the death of George VI, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother continued as patron. Today, the Her Majesty the Queen is Patron of the Club and the Duke of Wellington is President.

The Hon Henry Holland-Hibbert, great grandson of the 3rd Viscount Knutsford, still has the stud book that traces the foundation of the famous Munden line of Labradors and, according to records, the original kennel is still intact on the Munden Estate.

It’s strange how trails can lead you in circles. I had already traversed the Atlantic Ocean in an effort to understand more about the breed I love so much, and now I found myself navigating the North Circular around west London towards Munden House, a 30-room eighteenth-century mansion located in the suburbs of London, just off the M1. The seat of the Viscount Knutsfords since 1874, the estate is an oasis of rural calm in the embrace of one of the most urbanised parts of the United Kingdom. There is no great gatehouse, pomp or ceremony; a tiny gate leads the way through barley fields to the manor house.

Henry Holland-Hibbert moved into Munden in 1992, where his father, Michael Knutsford, is the current 6th Viscount Knutsford. Henry’s wife, Kate Holland-Hibbert, met me at the top of the drive. She was wearing an earpiece because the house has become popular as a film, television and fashion shoot location and an army of film coordinators had temporarily taken over the grounds. Kate was keeping an ear on proceedings. She invited me into her warm kitchen where a black Labrador was stretched out next to the Aga. On the walls were paintings and portraits of various breeds of dog. Both Henry and his father, Michael, then welcomed me warmly, as did the Labrador. Under strict Knutsford folklore, every Labrador belonging to the family must be given a name beginning with S. For the current Labs, the family had voted on Smudge and Scooby Doo.

There on the kitchen table was the stud book that I had come to see. Saucy, Sarah, Scottie, Sahib, Sober, Sceptre, Sermon, Sandfly … the list went on into the hundreds. It was an impressive list of ‘S’ names.

No one remembers why the tradition began, but the family dutifully continues it into the present day. What was more telling, though, was the straightforward approach that had been taken towards the estate’s dogs in previous decades. Next to each entry was a comment box, and several struck me in particular: ‘Picked up poison and died’ read one entry; ‘Distemper’ read many more; ‘Died, Swallowed a bone’. Others were a little more brutal. ‘Well shot’ and ‘dead and not mourned for’ read several entries – clearly a reference to dogs that were not popular.

The stud book records tell us that the first Lord Knutsford acquired a Labrador in 1884: Sybil, a bitch closely bred back to Netherby Boatswain. The book records a description of her being a ‘wonderful good bitch, nose, pace, endurance and marking’. She was mated to a dog from Lord Malmesbury’s kennel and thus the Munden line began. Munden Sixty, the result of a mating between Munden Sarah (a Sybil granddaughter) and the Duke of Buccleuch’s Nith (a Malmesbury Tramp grandson), was born in 1897 and by all accounts was a much-loved dog. When he died ten years later, it was Lord Knutsford himself who wrote those words in the stud book that had affected me so much: ‘To the everlasting grief of all who knew him, this splendid dog died in August 1907’. Sixty was the sire of a bitch who was to become perhaps the most famous of all the early Labradors, for it was she, Munden Single, whose impact on the field trial world would change the pattern of working gundogs for all time.

Munden Single was born in 1899 to Munden Scottie, who had been bought from the Duke of Buccleuch’s kennel. Her breeding was therefore almost pure Buccleuch and Malmesbury. Single was destined for a success in field trials and shows that all others have sought to follow. Single had already won prizes in the show ring, including a CC^fn1 at the KC Show, when, in 1904, she was entered in the IGL^fn2 field trial at Sherbourne. As the first Labrador ever to appear at a field trial, she attracted much interest. The newspapers of the day recorded:

Only those who were at the Meeting know how very nearly the Stake was carried off by the finest Labrador bitch ever seen on or off the bench. We refer to the Hon Mr Holland-Hibbert’s blue blooded Munden Single – up to a certain point nothing could have stopped her winning the highest honours at the trial. One of the best shots in England, a man who has handled retrievers all his life, declared to us that Single was the best game-finder and the steadiest retriever he had ever seen.

Sadly, she didn’t win because she mouthed a bird when bringing it to hand. Lord Knutsford wrote in his record book, ‘she was too gross and I was to blame for not getting her finer. She was out of breath after a strong runner and resented its struggles’. Single had, however, done enough to ensure that Labradors were now well and truly on the map. She won a CoM (Certificate of Merit) at that trial, then went on to win others and continued to win well on the bench. When she died in 1909, her body was preserved and put on display, and it is believed still to be held in a museum vault. Lord Knutsford wrote: ‘It is a bad representation’.

In the early days of owning Labradors, Lord Knutsford regularly showed his dogs and enjoyed some considerable success with them. In 1904 he won the first bitch CC ever awarded with Munden Single, and Munden Sentry won the only dog CC, awarded in 1905. In 1909 Munden Sooty won two CCs at Crufts and Darlington. In fact, during the first six years of ownership, when a total of 29 CCs was available, dogs owned by Lord Knutsford or bred from Munden dogs won 15 CCs.

In 1923 Munden Scarcity was mated to Dual Ch Banchory Bolo. There were six surviving puppies; Lord Knutsford kept two: Solo, a dog, and Singer, a bitch. Another bitch was given to His Majesty the King and a dog went to Lady Howe. Lady Howe’s puppy turned out to be Ch Banchory Danilo, a dog described by Lord Knutsford as ‘winning more championships than any dog ever known – or nearly so’. Munden Solo also did well at shows; at Crufts in 1927 he was entered in ten classes, won six, was second in two and third in another. The judge wrote of him, ‘if there had been a little more of him in size, I think he would have been very near perfection.’

Michael explained to me that, alongside his great grandfather, it had been Mrs Quintin Dick, as she then was, who had been instrumental in the formation of the Labrador Retriever Club in 1916, becoming the first Secretary and Treasurer – offices she held until her death in 1961. She also became the Chairman in 1935 when Lord Knutsford died. She was in every way the driving force of the club and the champion of the breed in its formative years.

Lady Howe owned some of the most influential Labradors of all time: dual champions Banchory Bolo, Banchory Painter, Banchory Sunspeck and Bramshaw Bob; champions Ilderton Ben, Banchory Trueman, Banchory Danilo, Bolo’s Trust, Ingleston Ben, Orchardton Donald and field trial champion Balmuto Jock, to name but a few. Lady Howe purchased many of the dogs she made famous, her keen eye quickly spotting the potential of any young dog.

Her undoubted favourite was Bolo, though, a dog that did so much for the breed. Born in 1915, sired by Scandal of Glyn (a FT Ch^fn3 Peter of Faskally son), Bolo was an eighth generation from Lord Malmesbury’s Tramp (1878), through Munden Sixty and Sentry. His start in life was not a happy one and until Lady Howe took him on at the age of three, he showed no sign of the greatness that was within him.

Lady Howe worked tirelessly for the club, and by her example and encouragement the Labrador attained a position as the most popular retriever – which it still holds to this day. In the early days dogs were expected to be dual purpose and most of Lady Howe’s dogs achieved success both in the field and on the bench. Served well by her trainer/handler Tom Gaunt, Lady Howe ensured that her dogs performed their task successfully at the highest levels. It is very significant that four of the ten dual champions in the breed were owned by Lady Howe.

Together, Lady Howe and Lord Knutsford were great protectors of the breed. He frequently went into print to defend the Labrador. There were constant disputes as to the breed’s origins and Lord Knutsford was tireless in his endeavours to get to the true beginnings. There are notes of conversations with Major Radclyffe and Mr Stuart-Menzies, and letters to and from other early breeders. His kennel records describe dogs variously as being Newfoundland-type, Labrador-type, long-and rough-coated, smooth-coated, and frequently they had white markings.

Like so many other kennels, Munden had to endure a number of serious distemper outbreaks. Many promising puppies, and indeed some good adults, were lost. Lord Knutsford worked very hard to find a solution to the scourge. Having had little success in his approaches to the Ministry of Agriculture and the Royal Veterinary College, he finally persuaded the editor of The Field to set up an investigation into the disease. Funds were raised, the research was successful and a vaccine was eventually produced in 1929. The Daily Telegraph in that year reported that two vaccines were now available, albeit in very small supplies. The report went on: ‘dog owners have every reason to be grateful to Mr Holland-Hibbert for the idea and to the great sporting newspaper for the manner in which it has been made possible.’

Michael is a charming man, oozing passion for Labradors. He has personally supplied many dogs to Her Majesty, and the Queen has often lamented to him how much she wished she could spend more time with her beloved Labradors. Indeed, Michael told me the tale of one such of her dogs. The Queen had a particular soft spot for one Lab and decided to bring it to Windsor Castle so she could spend more time with it. She fed it and walked it herself, but the poor dog pined for its mates back at Sandringham and so she eventually sent it back for the sake of the dog. Even the Queen thinks of her dogs first.

It’s another anecdote of the powerful emotional command that Labradors have over us all.

Smudge nuzzled my knee in an effort to gain my attention. Labradors do this; they try to lift your hand in an effort to encourage you to stroke them. Smudge had a litter of eight puppies. Michael recounted how horrified his wife had been to discover that only four were black. Of the two yellows, she exclaimed, ‘what a shame’, and of the two chocolates she lamented, ‘how disappointing’. Colour is still an emotive subject amongst the purists. It seems that, despite the Queen’s approval, many still agree with the old fashion adage, ‘any colour as long as it’s black’.

‘Would you like to see the kennel?’ asked Kate, as she led me outside.

Nat Parker, the actor, sidled past me, as a director in a clichéd leather jacket and aviator sunglasses barked orders to the hundreds of foot soldiers. They were in the midst of filming Outcast.

Next to the house was an anonymous empty kennel.

‘There it is,’ smiled Henry.

‘It’s not much to look at,’ he explained. ‘We don’t use it any more.’

Like the Hurn Kennels, it was a forgotten, neglected part of the Labrador’s history.

Before I left, Michael told me a little about his great-grandfather.

‘The greatest anecdote about my great-grandfather, really, is from when he was speaking in his capacity as Chairman of the Labrador Retriever Club at the end of a field trial at Idsworth in 1935. He spoke, sat down with a drink in hand, collapsed and died. They carried him out in a box but everyone agreed it was the happiest way for him to go.’

Before leaving, I asked Henry about the provenance of their current Munden Labradors. He told me the story of a chance encounter.

‘When we got our Lab, who’s now 12 years old, my wife went to a breeder whose dogs she’d admired out walking. Knowing the family history, we explained that we were particularly keen to find a puppy that came from the Munden line. “That’s easy,” the breeder laughed. “Almost all Labradors are descended from the Munden line.” We thought we’d be unearthing something really special, but it turns out the Munden dogs are not dissimilar to Adam and Eve for humans!’

The breeder’s name was Sussie Wiles, someone I would later meet myself.

Across the Atlantic at the end of the nineteenth century, things were picking up for the Labrador, too, although it wasn’t until the late 1920s that the American Kennel Club recognised the Labrador Retriever as a separate breed. The first registration of Labradors by the AKC was in 1917, and in the early 1920s an influx of British dogs had begun to form the backbone of the breed in the United States. Distinguished Long Island families began to compete them in dog shows and retrieving trials, but they were an elite presence. A 1928 American Kennel Gazette article, entitled ‘Meet the Labrador Retriever’, ushered in a wider recognition of its traits as both game finders and water dogs. Up until those words were written in the United States, the American Kennel Club had only registered 23 Labradors in the country.

By the 1930s the ‘St John’s dog’ was rare in Newfoundland, and the 6th Duke of Buccleuch was only finally able to import a few more dogs between 1933 and 1934 to continue the line. The advent of the Second World War in 1939, with six tough years of food shortages and rationing, took its toll on breeding kennels. In many cases, dogs had to be fed on meat that was unfit for human consumption. Soon after the war, an epidemic of hardpad distemper killed significant numbers of dogs; a high proportion of the survivors were left with crippling chorea, a nasty disease of the nervous system also known as St Vitus’s Dance. Nevertheless, a core number of top-quality Labradors remained. Over the next four decades, the number increased by 300 per cent. After the war, there was a marked increase in the popularity of yellow Labs, and in 1960, the first chocolate champion was hailed.

The temperament of Labs and their abilities were perfect for all sorts of roles as working dogs; so much so that by 1952, the dog formerly prized solely as a sea dog, then wildfowling retriever, then gundog, became the popular all-round dog of today and the ultimate family pet.

‘The Labrador Retriever is without question the most popular retriever breed today, both for work and show,’ wrote P. R. A. Moxon in Gundogs: Training & Field Trials. ‘A comparatively “new” breed, Labradors have won the esteem of shooting men by their outstanding ability to be trained, find game and become companions and guards. The Labrador, as a breed, can be said to be both fast and stylish in action, unequalled in water and with “trainability” far above that of other breeds, and a devotion to master or mistress that makes them ideal companions. The smooth, short coat has many advantages readily appreciated by the housewife and the car owner. Dogs from working strains almost train themselves to the gun.’

As Wilson Stephens concluded in his definitive paper on the lost years of the Labrador, ‘Their versatility stems from a stolidity of temperament which makes them neither exciting nor excitable. It combines with an inherited eagerness to do what is expected of them. Their family tradition of jumping into a rough and icy sea whenever ordered to do so has now been transferred to many other functions outside sport.’

The wide-ranging usefulness of the Labrador sees them valued as guide dogs for the blind, by Customs officers for drug detection, by the police and the military for mine and explosive location, by rescue services, security guards and counterfeit detection experts as well as in a new field of medical detection. They carry out their duties with a sense of decorum. ‘Labradors set a tone for the occasions they grace. Their presence means that serious business is going on. The hazardous, often grim, North Atlantic scene seems a strange origin for these omnipresent participants in typically British occasions,’ wrote Stephens.

I love that sense of decorum that is prevalent in Labs. It isn’t a nose-in-the-air kind of arrogance that some breeds exude, it is more humble. They hold up their heads with pride, assured of their loyalty and ability. Perhaps this is the reason why the Labrador Retriever has been declared the most popular breed in the United States for nearly 24 consecutive years. More than 60 years on, Labradors hold universal appeal which makes them the most popular breed of dog by registered ownership not just in the United States, but also in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Israel.