Gone over to the dark side .

[Trekmoor]

It has been about 35 years since I last bought a lab pup but auld age has crept up on me so I have booked myself in for a lab puppy........ a black one .........I'm auld fashioned ! I nearly had a heart attack when I discovered what well bred from field trial stock lab pups cost nowadays ! I am a Scot after all.

I bought my first lab more than 50 years ago for £8 .....probably less than 12 dollars. My next one cost £30 and the one after that £60. Two of those labs got to the Retriever Championships so although their immediate sires and dams had never been trialed , I relied on the G.parents and G.G.Parents genes coming through.....and they did.

I have a sort of half-formed and possibly half-baked theory about real quality sometimes skipping a generation before it reappears so the pup I am buying now is from non-trialing parents that have very good bloodlines.
Because of this lack of field trial "Red" in the immediate parents pedigree I was able to buy this pup for about £300 less than she might otherwise have cost .......hope my gamble pays off !

Having had spaniels and brits and G.S.P.'s for the last 30 years or so I think I now need a rest ! I'm really looking forward to having a nice, easy to control, lab again after all these years ...famous last words ???

Bill T.

[deseeker]

good luck

[polmaise]

Should be a doddle then

[AZ Brittany Guy]

Enjoy!

[crackerd]

Bill, here I was hoping that it was your Scots fellow Polmaise who made you a bargain he had arranged through a 'Merican breeder of some repute - he knows a few of those these days, and 'Merican dogs, too. We're ready to claim him as our own by now - and if and when that happens, Robt. and I will conspire to see that your next Lab pup comes with an even better fair trade agreement price tag.

MG

It has been about 35 years since I last bought a lab pup but auld age has crept up on me so I have booked myself in for a lab puppy........ a black one .........I'm auld fashioned ! I nearly had a heart attack when I discovered what well bred from field trial stock lab pups cost nowadays ! I am a Scot after all.

I bought my first lab more than 50 years ago for £8 .....probably less than 12 dollars. My next one cost £30 and the one after that £60. Two of those labs got to the Retriever Championships so although their immediate sires and dams had never been trialed , I relied on the G.parents and G.G.Parents genes coming through.....and they did.

I have a sort of half-formed and possibly half-baked theory about real quality sometimes skipping a generation before it reappears so the pup I am buying now is from non-trialing parents that have very good bloodlines.
Because of this lack of field trial "Red" in the immediate parents pedigree I was able to buy this pup for about £300 less than she might otherwise have cost .......hope my gamble pays off !

[Trekmoor]

Thanks MG but I have a sort of feeling this lab will be my last dog ......... my health is a big problem now.

Bill T.

[ezzy333]

Bill, there cones that time as I am well aware. When we lost our last Brit a couple of months ago it was one of the decision I had to make. We now have 7 yr old Mini Pin that belonged to one of my sons that just had Open Heart surgery and it looks like the addition may be permanent. It is a MAJOR change in your life.

[mountaindogs]

Our lab is 4 years old now and has pushed me to the dark side as well. So much so that I put a deposit on another as well. She should be an early summer addition if all goes well.

congrats to you and hope you share pictures

[Trekmoor]

Thanks folks, I will let you know how I get on with the pup. She comes from England but her sire and dam are Scottish so I'm hoping she will understand my rather Scottish way of speaking !
The thing I sometimes see here in lab breeding is that the English quite often like to go to Scottish blood or to Irish blood once in a while . I'm told this is to help prevent their dogs becoming too "soft ?"

When I was in my twenties there was a gamekeeper/field trailer in Scotland who had his own way of making sure his lab pups were pretty hardy. When you turned up to buy a pup he'd get a hoe and start raking about under his rickety old sheds to try to pull a few pups out ! His bitches had their pup dens under those sheds and the pups never knew what a heat lamp etc. was ! His breeding was famous for being hardy animals......probably only the very fit survived to be sold.

Nobody I know of does that or anything like that now but I do sometimes think we coddle our pups a bit too much nowadays.

I think my biggest problem in the training of this pup will come from the thing I used to find to be ridiculously easy to train. That thing is heelwork. My heart and my breathing problems make walking a bit of a bad experience for me now. In addition to that I have, over the last 30 years with spaniels and the versatile breeds, done only what I call "practical heelwork." This means that my dogs ,while never going in front of me or more than a few feet from me, are permitted to move to either side or to just behind me while walking to heel. It would also be "practical" to have a lab behave in the same way when in the field but in tests or trials a lab would be hammered for marks or might be eliminated for this.

I can no longer do the walking needed for trialing but I still like to train to trial standards ......before I ruin the pup by taking it to shoots !

Anyway, thanks for taking an interest.
Bill T.

[polmaise]

Thanks MG but I have a sort of feeling this lab will be my last dog ......... my health is a big problem now.

Bill T.

Hope you are well my friend.
If you have spare time the kettle is always on.
Good luck with the pup.