The Labrador Retriever

Every Lab you have ever hunted with goes back to a fishing boat. Two hundred years ago, off the coast of Newfoundland, there was a dog nobody wrote books about. Short coat, thick tail, no quit in him.

He worked the boats. He hauled nets through water cold enough to kill a man. And when a cod shook loose off the hook, he went in after it.

Nobody taught him that. He just went. The English saw him and knew what they were looking at.

They bought the best ones right off the decks, took them home, and put them in the shooting field. Then they named him for a place he had never been. Labrador.

The name stuck. The dog did too. So here is what he is.

Two hundred years later, he marks the fall. He sits through the shot with his whole body shaking and does not break. He goes on his name and not one second before.

He brings the bird to your hand and sits down for the next one. And the water. That is the part the fishermen gave us.

Ice on the line, cattails up to your chest. A crippled bird that went down somewhere in all of it. He goes in like it is nothing.

Because to him, it is. The soft mouth is bred in. The steadiness is trained.

Every one of us who has run a Lab has learned which one we got handed.

From THE BREED REEL, KENAI's Sunday series on Instagram. Every fact in it is traced to the breed's standard, its parent club, or a named history; nothing came from memory.