The Labrador Retriever - A Complete Anthology of the Dog

Before it was the family favourite, it was a fisherman's dog off the Newfoundland banks - and then the hardest-working retriever in the shooting field.

The Labrador Retriever - A Complete Anthology of the Dog gathers breed chapters from the kennel literature of 1910 to 1931, among them J. Sidney Turner's The Kennel Encyclopaedia (1910), Arthur Craven's Dogs of the World (1931) and A. Croxton Smith's About Our Dogs (1931). They describe a dog descended from the St John's water dog, landed at English ports by the Newfoundland fishing trade and refined on the great sporting estates, recognised as a breed in its own right by the Kennel Club only in 1903.

These are chapters about a working gun dog, not a pet: points, temperament, water-work and drive, the celebrated dogs of the day and their pedigrees, with the original photographs reproduced throughout.

This edition features:

• Breed chapters from the kennel encyclopaedias of 1910 to 1931, by the authorities of their day
• The breed as a working gun dog, a generation after Kennel Club recognition
• Points, temperament and field ability, with the pedigrees of celebrated winners
• The original photographs of the leading dogs of the era, reproduced throughout