Labrador retriever
Labradors come not from Labrador but from Newfoundland, where the St John's water dog worked alongside fishermen hauling nets and lines out of freezing water.
English gentry imported the type in the early 1800s and refined it into the retriever recognised today.
The build still shows the job: a broad head, a dense weatherproof coat and a thick tapering tail the breed standard calls an otter tail, which works as a rudder. Labradors are strong, food-motivated and relentlessly cheerful, which makes them easy to train and easy to overfeed. They have topped popularity rankings in Britain and America for decades.
- Origin
- Newfoundland, refined in England from the early 1800s
- Size
- 25–36 kg, 55–62 cm at the shoulder
- Lifespan
- 10–12 years
- Coat
- Short, dense and weatherproof, with a soft undercoat
- Temperament
- Outgoing, even-tempered, highly food-motivated
- Exercise
- At least an hour daily, more for a young one
Related: Chesapeake bay retriever · Curly-coated retriever · Flat-coated retriever · Golden retriever
18 labrador retriever photos of 6 dogs, newest first
Living with a labrador retriever
The coat is short but far from low-shedding — it comes out year round and in handfuls each spring and autumn. A weekly brush and a tolerance for hair on dark trousers covers it.
Weight is the single biggest health lever you have. A large share of labradors carry a POMC gene variant that genuinely blunts the feeling of being full, so they are not being greedy so much as never quite finishing. Measured meals rather than free feeding, and treats counted into the day's total.
Hip and elbow dysplasia are common enough to be worth screening, and exercise-induced collapse and progressive retinal atrophy both have DNA tests available.
General guidance, not veterinary advice. Individual dogs vary, and anything about a specific animal is a question for a vet who has seen it.
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