Faithful labradors make excellent guide-dogs for the blind

Posted in Animals, Dogs, Historical articles, Medicine on Monday, 11 June 2012

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This edited article about the labrador originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 723 published on 22 November 1975.

Guide-dog, picture, image, illustration

The female labrador is an excellent guide-dog

A “Jack-of-all-trades” in the canine world is the Labrador Retriever. Not only does he excel in his original job – retrieving – but he is a great guide dog for the blind. And he is the most successful dog used in peace and wartime for locating hidden explosives, firearms and dangerous drugs.

Labradors were not originally found in Labrador, as you might imagine, but further south in the Canadian province of Newfoundland. There, they were trained by fishermen to go into the sea around the rocky inlets and retrieve fish which had escaped from the nets.

They were known as the “smaller St. John’s dogs from Newfoundland” and were described in 1814 as “extremely quick in running and swimming, and their sense of smell is scarcely to be credited”.

Seamen brought them across the Atlantic to Britain when they landed at Poole harbour in Dorset with their cargoes of salted fish.

The Earl of Malmesbury started keeping and breeding these dogs in about 1835, calling them “Newfoundlands” He gave the name “Labrador” to one of a somewhat smaller type in 1878 and this name has been in use ever since.

As a gun dog, the Labrador is acknowledged to be unsurpassed. The retriever’s job is to seek out shot prey and bring it back safely to the hand of its master, its “soft” mouth barley touching the game.

From gun dog to guide dog for the blind was an easy, short step for the versatile Labradors. They have all the attributes needed for this important work – perhaps the greatest assistance any dog can give to man. Well endowed with initiative, extremely intelligent, steady and willing, they respond rapidly to training which, in this case, lasts for four months. Female dogs are always used, as they are less easily distracted than males.

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