Gone over to the dark side .
Gone over to the dark side .
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.
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.
Re: Gone over to the dark side .
good luck
Re: Gone over to the dark side .
Should be a doddle then
- AZ Brittany Guy
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Re: Gone over to the dark side .
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
MG
Trekmoor wrote: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 !
Re: Gone over to the dark side .
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.
Bill T.
Re: Gone over to the dark side .
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
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Re: Gone over to the dark side .
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
congrats to you and hope you share pictures
Re: Gone over to the dark side .
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.
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.
Re: Gone over to the dark side .
Hope you are well my friend.Trekmoor wrote: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.
If you have spare time the kettle is always on.
Good luck with the pup.