Labrador: The Story of the World’s Favourite Dog

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Some of it, such as coins, flip-flops and letters, just tastes a little different, but in the end it’s all food and they will do anything for it. The duke and his friend the tenth Earl of Home loved their dogs so much that when they went on a yachting holiday to Naples in 1839 they took their favourite Labs – Moss and Drake – with them. But the breechloaders, with their far quicker loading time, ushered in the era of driven shooting and much bigger bags. He campaigns tirelessly for conservation, the environment and animal welfare, is an ambassador for WWF, Medecins Sans Frontieres and Tusk, a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the President of the Campaign for National Parks.

Labrador has such a wonderful premise, I was so excited to read this book, especially with a book by Ben Fogle (aka a great presenter who I watched when I was younger).Labs are privy to secrets, gently, quietly steering decision-making like hairy, four-legged guardian angels. 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. One of the dogs in Robert Burns’ poem, The Twa Dogs (1786) by His hair, his size, his mouth, his lugs/Shew’d he was nane o’ Scotland’s dogs/But whelped some place far abroad,/Where sailors gang to fish for cod. Now, just like Inca, Storm has started joining me as I work but her life is a long way from her ancestors' who worked those nets off Newfoundland 300 years ago.

This was far from the first time he'd used the word 'bitch' and he'd not expressed this sentiment before.The historical account of the lineage of the Labrador and of the personalities engaged with bringing the dogs to the UK and the subsequent distribution of blood lines was really interesting but it rather ran out of steam thereafter. Ben visits Canada, discovers hair-raising stories of early Labrador exploits and uncovers stories of RNIB Labradors and Labradors at war, Labradors as working dogs and every other manifestation of the Labrador’s character. Ben visits Canada, discovers hair-raising stories of early Labrador exploits and uncovers stories of RNIB Labradors and Labradors at war, Labradors as working dogs and every other manifestation of the Labrador's character. He has travelled from the Red Wharf in Anglesey, Wales ont the Western Isles of Scotland and Islay, the island used as a testing ground by Spencer Wilks in 1947 to put several of the early Series Land Rover prototypes through their paces. The easy trainability and superior intellectual capacity of Labradors make them fast at learning tricks and being able to ‘perform’.

I listened to it on audible and it was read by Ben Fogle himself, which really brought it to life, as I could hear his emotions when he spoke of losing his beloved Inca! He campaigns tirelessly for conservation, the environment and animal welfare, is an ambassador for WWF, Medecins Sans Frontier and Tusk, a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the President of the Campaign for National Parks. He campaigns tirelessly for conservation, the environment and animal welfare, is an ambassador for WWF, Médecins Sans Frontières and Tusk, a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the President of the Campaign for National Parks. The brutal, heartbreaking reality of having a dog of course is that we will inevitably outlive our beloved hound. This could well have signalled the end of the Scottish lineage of the labrador retriever were it not for the sixth Earl of Malmesbury who “gave them a pair, descended from our own imported dogs”.The late Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, former chatelaine of Chatsworth, was Deputy President of the International Gundog League Retriever Society and a long-serving committee member. Dogs also bring 'germs' into the home, Ben said which is important, particularly for children who need to build up their resistance. I love Labradors and have a male lab, so I love learning about their traits and habits but I found myself skimming many pages of in depth history, which is not typical of me. In the first published account of a labrador, his Diary describes the dog as “by far the best for any kind of shooting.