The Labrador Retriever came in as America’s most popular breed last year for the 28th time. Cities like Salt Lake City, Nashville, Austin, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Raleigh-Durham (North Carolina), San Antonio, Denver, St. Louis Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Fort Worth, Kansas City (Missouri), Jacksonville, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Portland and Seattle (in which the breed is ranked most popular) helped make it the Number One breed in the United States. Labs are also the most popular breed in Colombia, Mongolia and Jordan, but based on Internet searches, they didn’t even appear as the most “looked-up” breed on a list of 161 countries! It’s rather shocking.
After the second World War, Labradors were a rare breed in Germany, and they were shown very rarely in that country. It wasn’t until 1965 that the breed was even mentioned in the Jagdgebrauchshunde-Stammbuch (field trial register), and that honor went to Abraham v.d. Gaesdonk, a black Labrador Retriever who won first prize in a trial in which he competed against five Golden Retrievers.
With little knowledge of the British tradition of such trials, Lab owners in Germany started basic training with obedience and retrieving wounded game, and the breed’s well known eager-to-please temperament was noted and complimented at all-breed competitions which quickly improved the breed’s popularity in the country. A Deutscher Retriever Club (DRC) was formed in 1963, but it included all the retrievers, and the vast majority of them were Golden Retrievers.
The first Labrador Retriever litter in the country was registered by the DRC in 1966, a litter of six yellow Labs, and over the next two decades, registrations numbers steadily rose. To wit, in 1968, only fourteen Labs were registered, but that rose to sixty-seven dogs in 1973, and five years later, the figure soared to 303 dogs. At the end of 1983, 1,554 Labs were registered which we think proves that you can’t keep a good thing secret for very long.
A breed specific club was formed in 1984 by breeders who left the DRC to form the Labrador Retriever Club of Germany, a move that wasn’t approved by DRC representatives, but after too much time, and a lot of legal action, the club was finally acknowledged by the German Kennel Club, or VDH. As of 1997, more Labs were registered under the rules of the Labrador Retriever Club of Germany than within the Deutscher Retriever Club.
The breed may not be the Top Dog in Germany, but it is gaining ground.
Image: Yellow Lab Blue Wake by Molly Poole
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