Labrador Retriever

Who it suits

A family that likes being outdoors. The Labrador is friendly to everyone by nature — to children, to strangers and to other dogs — and it will always make a poor guard dog, because it is more likely to welcome an intruder.

It does not suit a home expecting a ready-made calm dog. For the first two or three years it is a large, clumsy puppy that knocks a child over with its tail and cannot put its own brakes on. The reputation as a calm family dog is true, it just starts later than people expect.

What it looks like

• Height: dogs 56–57 cm, bitches 54–56 cm at the withers
• Weight: dogs 29–36 kg, bitches 25–32 kg
• Coat: short, dense and hard, with a water-resistant undercoat
• Colour: black, yellow (from cream to fox red) and chocolate
• Lifespan: usually 10–13 years

There are two identifying features: the otter tail, thick at the base and round, and webbing between the toes. Both come from the original work — retrieving shot duck from water.

Here too there are two lines. The show Labrador is stockier and calmer, the working one is lighter, faster and considerably more demanding to keep occupied. A working line does not belong in a flat with short walks.

How much exercise it needs

At least an hour and a half a day, and not just walking on a lead. The Labrador was bred to carry things all day — retrieving, swimming and scent work satisfy it more than distance does.

It swims naturally, and water is the gentlest exercise there is for it. In an older dog with sore joints it is often the only exercise it still enjoys.

Training and the first months

It learns willingly and fast, because it will do almost anything for food. That makes training enormously easier — and it also means it learns to beg and to steal from the table just as willingly.

• Control of what goes in the mouth, from day one. A Labrador will pick up anything off the ground. Socks, stones and leftovers from the park are the commonest reason Labradors end up in surgery.
• Not jumping up at people is dealt with while the dog weighs ten kilos, not thirty.
• The recall should be trained before adolescence arrives at around eight months. Until then the puppy follows you by itself; after that the world becomes interesting.

Feeding

An adult eats roughly 300–400 g of dry food a day in two meals. With a Labrador, though, the issue is not the amount — it is discipline.

The breed has a demonstrably higher tendency to obesity: a proportion of dogs carry a genetic change that stops them feeling full. That means the dog cannot eat until it has had enough, because that moment never comes. You have to weigh the food, count treats towards the daily ration and hold firm.

Excess weight is the main health problem in the Labrador and it makes everything else worse: joints, heart, breathing and lifespan. The ribs must be possible to feel with your hand.

Common health problems

• Hip and elbow dysplasia — inherited. The parents must have scored radiographs.
• Progressive retinal atrophy — gradual loss of sight. A DNA test exists.
• Obesity and the arthritis that follows — the commonest problem in the breed and the one you can influence most.
• Gastric torsion — an acute, life-threatening emergency; keep the dog quiet after meals.
• Ear infections — a drop ear and a love of water go badly together; dry the ears after swimming.
• Exercise-induced collapse — rarer, but tested for in working lines.

This is not a diagnostic guide. If you can see something wrong with the dog, it belongs at the vet, not on the internet.

Anything else to consider

The Labrador sheds all year round and heavily twice a year — short hair works itself into fabric worse than long hair does.

And expect a good deal to be destroyed in the first two years. That is not a training failure, that is a Labrador.