Читать книгу Labrador: The Story of the World’s Favourite Dog - Ben Fogle, Ben Fogle - Страница 9

Despite her outdoor life, Inca hated the rain. In fact, the only thing she hated more than the rain was getting her paws muddy. She also detested anything uncomfortable under her paws: rocks, pebbles, pine cones, pine needles, mud, even puddles could sometimes stop her in her tracks. But rain was the worst for her. If it was raining outside and she was inside, she wasn’t going anywhere. She hated getting her coat wet almost as much as her paws.

Like most Labradors, she lived for her stomach. Inca loved food. She loved food as much as she hated stepping on pine cones.

Rather contradictorily, although she hated rain and puddles, she loved swimming. Like a moth to a flame, she was often left completely unable to stop herself. She would sleepwalk, like a zombie, into the water.

I will never forget the first time I met the TV presenter Kate Humble. We had been teamed up by the BBC as a ‘TV couple’ to present a new series, Animal Park, following life behind the scenes at Longleat Safari Park.

I had just returned from Nepal when I picked up a voice message from Kate suggesting I come to dinner at her house so that we get to know each other ahead of filming. Naturally, I arrived with Inca in tow. Kate opened the door, and before I had time to introduce myself, Inca had barged past, down the hall, through the kitchen and belly flopped into the large fish pond in the back garden.

She re-emerged above the water line with pond weed on her head. I half expected a goldfish in her mouth. What’s more, she couldn’t get out. I had to kneel and haul her out by the scruff of her neck, at which point she shook the stinky water all over Kate, her kitchen and me.

It gets worse … Inca then discovered Kate’s beloved rats. Yes, Kate kept several pet rats. She’s since got better taste and keeps dogs of her own, but back then she had rats and Inca loved them. She sat next to their cage, staring, drooling and singing.

Inca had the best singing voice of any dog I know. Some might describe it as a kind of whine, but a whine is like a whinge – it’s a negative noise. Inca sang. It was a happy, positive noise. I liked to think she was serenading the rats, but the rats weren’t so sure. They hid in the corner as this giant, dripping wet, black dog sang to them.

Kate eventually intervened, worrying that the canine song might lead to cardiac arrest on the rats’ part. And so we ate dinner to the smell of wet dog. It was the beginning of a long friendship, though, so it wasn’t all bad.

Another time I remember visiting the late Duchess of Norfolk at her home, Bakers, in Berkshire. I was dating her granddaughter, Kinvara, and we had both been invited for Sunday lunch. As always, I arrived with Inca. It was a glorious summer day and once again Inca made a bee line for the water. In this instance, it wasn’t a fish pond but an immaculately clean swimming pool. Before I could stop her, Inca was sailing through the air into the azure waters.

We weren’t invited back.

Over the years I lost count of the number of times I hauled Inca from rivers, canals and even cattle troughs. And all this from a dog that didn’t like to get her paws wet. It was all or nothing with Inca.

It is perhaps unsurprising, given its coastal place of origin, that the Labrador began its life as a Water Dog. ‘It was as a water-dog that the Labrador came into Britain. Regarded as a water-dog only, except by the few who treasured them, and ignored by most, Labradors spent the next 50 years in the well-cushioned obscurity which is the privilege of specialists,’ wrote Stephens.

It was in Dorset that the Labrador was first treasured and ignored in Britain. I have always loved Dorset. I even lived there for four years, in the army town of Blandford, which I remember used to be called ‘An Interesting Georgian Town’. Perhaps it was because I spent some of my formative years there that I can feel my whole body relax when I arrive in the county. It has that unique ability to combine happy memories with a largely unchanged landscape.

Often described as Thomas Hardy country, Dorset is defined by its rolling green farmland and its famous Jurassic coast. I have since returned many times both for work and pleasure. Indeed, I have spent the past few years based at Poole Harbour, making a series about one of the world’s largest natural harbours.

Poole really is a place of contradictions, where hard-working fishermen moor their ships alongside Sunseeker super-yachts. There can be few places in the United Kingdom where there is such a jarring clash of the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’.

Sandbanks peninsula is often described as the most expensive real estate in Great Britain, and even one of the most expensive in the world. Here, million-pound glass and steel structures look out onto the working waters where fishermen still ply their trades. That it was here that the Labrador was first discovered seems incredible.

The harbour wall has changed very little in the last century. Close your eyes and you can still imagine the hubbub of trawlers emptying their holds of cod after their long voyage across the Atlantic. This would once have been a bustling place. It must have been quite a spectacle.

Today, the small fishermen’s harbour is largely ignored. A handful of small boats still work the harbour and the ocean beyond, but Poole is as much a location for pleasure craft as it is for working boats.

Next to the old harbour pilot office, overlooking the estuary and the Sunseeker factory beyond, is Poole Harbour’s museum. The museum is full of old artefacts covering the harbour’s rich history, where old, faded black-and-white photographs offer a small porthole into the bygone era. I asked the curator if he had ever heard about the harbour’s connection with the Labrador. Nobody in the museum knew anything. There were no records. No photographs. No documents or accounts. The only inference was the large section dedicated to Newfoundland and the Dorset families who emigrated in search of wealth.

I sifted through hundreds of old photographs hoping to find the famous performing ‘black dogs’ that had captivated Lord Malmesbury, but there was nothing.

It seems that Poole has long forgotten its part in the story of the evolution of the world’s most popular breed. So while the connection between Poole and Newfoundland is strong, Poole’s role in the import of the Labrador as we know it today remains a bit of a mystery. Back in London, at the British Library, I read the first page of the leather-bound Stud Book of the Duke of Buccleuch’s Labrador. The book names Ned (1882), sired by Lord Malmesbury’s Sweep (1877) and dam Lord Malmesbury’s Juno (1878), and describes him as ‘of a different category to any of the other dogs’ at the Duke’s kennels. According to the book, Ned was followed by Avon (1885), hailed as even better than Ned – sired by Lord Malmesbury’s Tramp, with Juno again the dam dog. The carefully kept stud book represented the start of an official record of the Labrador, but in retrospect, it is a rare and valuable document which highlights some of the events in the development of the breed. Another entry describes the time Buccleuch Avon is said to have sired ‘liver-coloured’ pups: in 1892, the record states that two ‘liver colour’ Labradors were born at the Buccleuch kennel. Labrador enthusiasts then began to demonstrate a desire to preserve and safeguard the ‘new breed’. Records also show that in 1899 the first registered yellow Labrador was born at the kennel of Major Radclyffe and named Ben of Hyde. Was this the first time the breed deviated from the traditional black?

The colour of the breed has long divided Labrador lovers. Many still believe that black is the true original colour and that yellow and brown are mere anomalies that caught on. Certainly as a dog to blend into the landscape during a shoot, black is undoubtedly the best colour, although yellows can blend in well in some wildfowling situations.

Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century Labradors were carefully bred but still remained ‘rarities if not eccentricities’ in the sporting and domestic scene. Traded exclusively among the landed gentry, they proved themselves the most versatile of working dogs: hardy, reliable, efficient, gentle, clean and undemanding. The same traits that define them today.

The Field once wrote, ‘One of the countryside’s riddles is how and why a race of dogs, so dominant for only 10 years short of a century, could also have been so dormant for so long, a clear case of unrecognised talent.’

There is a truism here. In 1886 – 75 years after their arrival on these shores – J.H. Walsh, in his Dogs of the British Islands: Being a Series of Articles on the Points of their Various Breeds and the Treatment of the Diseases to which they are Subject, described the Labrador or Lesser Newfoundland Dog as a mere accessory to a certain lifestyle: ‘As his use in this country is almost entirely confined to retrieving game, he cannot be included among the non-sporting dogs.’

How did the Labrador go from being a specialist wildfowl retriever prized by a small elite circle in Britain to being the world’s most popular domestic dog? The answer begins with another milestone in history: the wide-scale development of the breech-loading gun in the late nineteenth century. Up until then, shooting was by muzzle-loaded guns, i.e. a firearm into which the ‘shot’ and the propellant explosive powder are loaded from the muzzle of the gun (the forward, open end of the gun’s barrel). To go shooting usually meant several guns (people with guns) walking through a woodland, copse, moor, waterland or field, shooting the birds their dogs put up. This style of ‘walked up’ shooting (sometimes called ‘shooting over dogs’) remained customary until the introduction of the much more efficient double-barrelled, quick-loading shotgun.

Thanks to the revolutionary refinement in precision engineering and machining in the nineteenth century, breech loading – whereby a cartridge or shell is loaded into a chamber integral to the rear portion of a barrel – became the norm. It meant a significant reduction in reloading time and gave rise to the popularity of driven game shooting, where beaters are employed to walk through woods and over moors or fields (dependent on the quarry and the season) and drive game over a line of standing guns spaced about 50 metres apart. In driven shooting, the head count of shot game is much higher than in walked-up shooting, requiring pickers-up with dogs to make sure all shot or wounded game is collected. The advent of driven game shooting was the cue for the Labradors to come into their own. Only dogs could keep up with the guns.

But it didn’t happen quickly. Wilson Stephens described the evolution in The Field: ‘Although those to whom it had become second nature no doubt learned to reload them safely in half the time that we would take, the pouring in of powder, the ramming of the wad, the charging with shot and further ramming, all processes duplicated for each barrel, made driven game as we know it pointless. All shooting was over dogs, and those which quested or hunted up the game also retrieved it, as spaniels still do … With so little game on the ground at any time, and with no need to hurry because of the time taken to reload after every second shot, specialist retrievers were unnecessary … When the shooting scene changed with the development of breech loading, the Labrador was not only present in Britain, but was the only retriever available. Yet it was not widely adopted to meet the new situation. Instead, the flatcoated retriever became supreme. Perhaps the strictly functional, workworthy Labrador seemed plain beside the more elegant flatcoat. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and is not necessarily synonymous with usefulness. The flatcoat had, and still has, an unlosable handicap.’

Stephens continues to press their claims in comparing the retrieving processes of both dogs – the flatcoat’s tendency to cast widely, downwind of a target, and then work slowly towards it, dependent on air scent versus the Labrador’s ‘direct line to the mark, followed by a tight-patterned working-out of a limited area around a fall’. Stephens notes, ‘The extra distance covered by flatcoats not only takes longer but inevitably moves other game off the ground, to the detriment of the sport. When Labradors worked, more game remained …’ He triumphantly concludes: ‘Realisation of the average Labrador’s superiority was sudden, positive, and has proved permanent.’

So when did the Labrador become popular away from the field? Perhaps unsurprisingly, the gundog was now known not just as the Labrador but as the Labrador Retriever, and it had become the gundog of choice for the British aristocracy.

The Victorian love of both dogs and pastimes led to the incredible popularity of field trials and dog shows. The first conformation dog show – a show to assess how well individual dogs conform to specific breed standards – was held in the town hall of Newcastle upon Tyne in June 1859. The only breeds scheduled were pointers and setters. The first organised field trial – a competitive event at which hunting dogs such as retrievers, pointers and flushing dogs compete against one another in a series of tasks – took place at Southill, in Bedfordshire, in 1865. Both sports gained a large and fashionable following.

In April 1873 the Kennel Club was founded to provide a set of rules and standards for the popular new pastimes. The very first sport recognised by the Kennel Club was the sport of Field Trials, which in this era particularly tested the skills of working gundogs and attracted large and appreciative audiences. In 1886, Charles Cruft, a general manager at a dog biscuit manufacturer, founded Crufts Dog Show. Billed as the ‘First Great Terrier Show’, it began with 57 classes and 600 entries. By 1891, the show was known as Crufts Greatest Dog Show. The venue was the Royal Agricultural Hall, Islington, and it was the first at which all breeds were invited to compete, with approximately 2,000 dogs and almost 2,500 entries.

As a young boy, I used to visit Crufts with my father, when it was still held in central London, at Earls Court, and it helped define my childhood. I loved going to Crufts – the noise, the smell, the dogs. My role in the show became tighter in 2006, though, when I was asked to present the BBC’s live coverage of the show. I presented Crufts for two years. I can’t say those years were as happy as my childhood recollections; the pressure of presenting a live prime-time TV show, and the interaction with a significantly haughty group of breeders who didn’t like my style of presenting, inevitably led to a bumpy ride.

I co-presented the show with Inca, my black Lab, at my side. The show was dropped several years later, after the BBC ran a panorama exposé that revealed the slightly murky world of the Kennel Club and their breed requirements that often lead to long-term health complications for many breeds. In fact, Inca was a case in point. Her epilepsy was more than likely to have been caused by a limited gene pool. In short – incest.

I digress.

Back at the late turn of the last century, dog ownership was booming, and with it an appetite for specialised breeds that ordinary people could ‘discover’ as the dog that best suited them. Labradors had come to Britain as sea dogs. They were spotted and cultivated as wildfowling water dogs. As gundogs to the gentry, they acquired a fashionable social status attractive to the aspirational classes. Eager to please and eminently trainable, loyal and lovable, playful and energetic, the Labrador gradually became a great all-rounder, a symbol of social status, a valued working dog to some and a treasured family pet to millions. Once the development of breech loading revolutionised the shooting scene, the breed’s gundog expertise was its passport to the millions.

I left Poole and headed to meet Lord Malmesbury’s son on their old estate. The Malmesbury Estate itself was broken up and sold several decades ago, with the great house turned into apartments and flats. Driving through the gates and along the drive, however, you still get a sense of the estate it once was.

The River Stour meanders through the land, through fields that were once flooded from the heavy rain which had made the river burst its banks. The Stour had memories for me from my school days, just a short way upriver from where I was now.

My first port of call was the small keeper’s cottage. Over tea and scones, the keeper explained to me how important Labradors still are for the shoots. We piled into a battered pickup and drove through the old estate to the remains of the kennels. They had long since fallen into disrepair, with just a couple of walls remaining, largely overgrown. Looking at what remained of them, it seemed incredible that the dogs that had once been kept in these kennels were more than likely to have been the progeny for the millions and millions of Labradors across the world.

It was about the same time that the Earl of Malmesbury was beginning his breeding programme in his kennel on the south coast of England that the fifth Duke of Buccleuch (1806–1884) and his brother, Lord John Scott, imported dogs for use as gundogs on the Queensberry estates, in the Scottish borders, from a Newfoundland fishing fleet which sailed into the River Clyde. They had also realised what an extraordinary dog the Labrador was and so established a kennel in around 1835. One of the Duke’s dogs, Brandy, earned his name on his journey across the Atlantic. Having been sent overboard in a heavy sea to fetch the cap of one of the crew, the young dog spent two hours in the water before he could be picked up again, by which point he was so exhausted that the sailors had to revive him with brandy.

The brothers loved their dogs so much that when they went on a yachting holiday to Naples in 1839, they took their favourite Labradors – Moss and Drake – with them: something that was unheard of back then.

According to records, in 1871, the Earl of Malmesbury’s neighbour, Major Radclyffe – who had patrolled Poole Harbour with the Earl admiring the fishermen’s sea dogs – imported a dog direct from Newfoundland. He was called Turk and would go on to sire the line that included Ben of Hyde, the first yellow Lab to be registered.

By the early 1880s the original Buccleuch strain had died out, just five or six decades on from the original purchases from the fishermen on the Clyde. This could well have signalled the end of the Scottish lineage of the Labrador Retriever, were it not for our friend the sixth Earl of Malmesbury who ‘gave them a pair, descended from our own imported dogs’.

It is probably fair to say that a chance meeting between the third Earl of Malmesbury (at the age of 75) with the sixth Duke of Buccleuch (1831–1914) and the twelfth Duke of Home (1834–1918) saved the Labrador from extinction. The two Scots were visiting a sick aunt on the south coast of England and while there accepted an invitation to participate in a waterfowl shoot at Hurn. Precisely where I was heading now.

The Hurn Estate is another old estate that was broken up long ago, but what remains is managed by the current Earl’s son, James Fitzharris. In an old pickup truck we drove through what was left of the estate that had once been the family seat to James’s ancestors. Hurn Court is now apartments, and there was an air of sadness as we drove along the road that had once been the drive to the grand house.

It was hard to imagine what this place must have been like when it was still the thriving seat of the Malmesburys, in the family’s heyday, when aristocracy had money and power.

‘That’s all that remains of the kennels,’ pointed James from one of the misted windows of the pickup. There were some simple foundations and the skeletal remains of one of the walls. The remains had been largely consumed by the encroaching Dorset countryside.

It struck me that these sad, unloved, anonymous ruins were symbolic of our amnesia as to the provenance of the world’s most popular breed. James explained that he still kept Labradors, but that his father, the current Earl of Malmesbury, ‘couldn’t stand them’.

It was lucky that the current Earl wasn’t seated back in 1887 when the two Scottish visitors were impressed by Malmesbury’s eager-to-please, efficient water dogs and recognised they were the same Little Newfoundler dogs as their father’s. Malmesbury generously offered them some of his dogs to carry on the breeding programme north of the border, and the pair of dogs, Avon and Ned, that he entrusted them with are now considered to be the ancestors of all modern Labradors: the legendary progenitors.

And so it was that the Earls of Malmesbury and the Dukes of Buccleuch were instrumental in developing and establishing the modern Labrador breed.

In a letter written to the Duke, dated 1887, the Earl first used the name ‘Labrador’ in print. ‘We always call mine Labrador dogs and I have kept the breed as pure as I could from the first I had,’ he wrote. ‘The real breed may be known by their having a close coat which turns water off like oil, and, about all, a tail like an otter.’

Inca had the fattest tail you have ever seen; it was more like an otter’s tail – thick with coarse hair. It had never occurred to me that this was part of her heritage – the powerful motor and rudder to propel her through the water.

As I said, Inca loved water.