A Little Bolt of Lightning

He doesn’t exactly streak across the floor like the flash of a bolt of lightning. He sort of bounces. But the little chocolate Labrador puppy I call Lightnin’ Ridge Bolt chases and bats at the soft sponge ball with his paw, then picks it up and bounces back to me, so proud of his accomplishment, and basking in the praise I give him for such a minor job. Since he is only six weeks old, it IS a big deal. I can envision him, nearly grown next winter, charging out into the marsh to retrieve a mallard drake that I have dropped in the decoys, and bringing it back to me; just as eager to receive praise for doing the job he was bred for.

Bolt will most likely be the last in the long line of dogs I began raising in 1978 when I lived in Arkansas. I didn’t know much about what I was doing back then, trying to train a Labrador, but I have a good idea now of what a Lab should be. Start them playing and frolicking with a ball at six or seven weeks, and make them into a companion, and figure if the ancestry is good, they’ll come into it like the moving of the hands of a clock, something that almost happens without you being able to see it.

Serious training at 8 or 9 months of age is great, but it is playing with a puppy at 8 or 9 weeks that pays the greatest dividends, and you can take that to the bank.

I have raised a ton of Labrador puppies. It began with old Brown-eyed Beau, my first retriever, a yellow Lab. Then there was Rambunctious, the chocolate Lab, one of the best I ever saw. Then there was Lad, even better perhaps, though no one who loves his Labradors tries to compare them. They are all wonderful. There was Simba and Czar, and Rambo, and Maverick, and their pictures can be found in my book on duck hunting, and in dozens of magazine articles I wrote about upland bird and waterfowl hunting over the years for magazines like Outdoor Life, Field and Stream, Petersen’s Hunting and Gun-Dog. Bolt will be the last, I am sure, because I no longer have the time nor inclination to raise puppies.

At one time, I had sixteen Labradors here on Lightnin’ Ridge, bringing a half dozen or so when I moved here from Arkansas, intent on raising big, blocky old-style dogs with intelligence and hunting instincts. I saw the coming of the pointing-Labradors, and the field-trial Labs, and watched the breed decline because of it.

Labs were developed at the turn of the last century, off the coast of eastern Canada, bred to go out and bring in the tow ropes of ships in harbors. They were heavy-bodied, not skinny, most from 80 to 100 pounds. They were not fast, but with strong, heavy bodies and stamina to survive that cold, cold water. Their heads were blocky and their eyes focused on yours, and held an intelligence that was amazing.

In my opinion, they should still be that way, not wiry little fast dogs trying to win some stupid field trial trophy, or crossed somewhere with solid-color German shorthair pointers. Those field trial dogs are high- strung, fast, and lacking in intelligence, and today you can see it in dogs which won’t sit still, and are about two-thirds the size of old-style Labradors that hunters valued so much a half-century ago. They have scrawny looking faces, and their eyes give away their lack of intelligence.

Show dog breeding didn’t hurt the looks of Labradors, but show-dogs lost the instinct to retrieve and hunt. Puppy mill breeders in the last thirty years, trying to make fast money out of the popularity of the breed, hurt the Labrador even more. I look at those people with a total disdain, not just because of how they have damaged the breed so badly, but because of how they hurt individual dogs. How could anyone be so cruel as most of those people who raise puppies and sell to brokers? How could there be such a class of people, so greedy and with so little compassion, people who put puppies on wire floors, and confine dogs to small boxes and concrete floors that destroy their bone and joints?

I raised puppies to sell too, but none ever went to puppy mill breeders. I sold only to hunters, and those who wanted companions and pets, and there were indeed occasions that I refused to sell a puppy because I knew what would lie ahead for it. I learned that I had to watch for the puppy mill people, but most of them couldn’t afford my pups, and most wouldn’t stay long after they found I stopped using American Kennel Club to register my dogs.

My kennels were big and roomy, with shade. Anyone can come to Lightnin’ Ridge today and see them, though most are empty now. I bought plastic kids swimming pools for their kennels, and kept them filled with water in the summer. In time, when I could afford larger stock tanks I used those. I learned how they loved the cold, and hated the heat.

I only put my Labs on concrete when we had a female with puppies, so we could keep it cleaner, and keep the puppies inside controlled-temperature kennels. I don’t know how many puppies we raised, but there were a lot. And we doted over them like grandparents.

Now here I am after thirty years of raising puppies, down to my very last litter. I only have three grown Labs now. They are getting old, and none will have puppies again. These little chocolate siblings of Bolt’s will go to homes where most will be house dogs, companions and occasional hunters, as Bolt will be. All my personal Labradors were house pets, taught to stay on their rugs beside me, wherever I was, in my workshop, my office, or in the living room watching a ball game, or beside my bed where I slept.

Some of the Labs I raised over the years were trained to be drug dogs, some specially trained as guide dogs or companions for special needs. Several of them saved lives. One saved a Kansas family by alerting them to a house fire one night as they slept, frantically insisting they awaken, just in the knick of time. That big male was only 11 months old at the time. My dogs were too slow for field trials, and they did not point. They hunted close to me when I hunted pheasant or grouse, they found cripples, retrieved ducks when ice was forming thin layers and the cold winds numbed my face. This little puppy, Bolt, will do the same. And he will be the last of the Lightnin’ Ridge Labradors.

If you have an interest in Labradors, I urge you to please read the Chapter in my book, “Memories from a Misty Morning Marsh” entitled, ‘Aladdin’s Story…A few words on selecting and training a Labrador puppy’.

I will include that in this weeks contribution to my website, www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com, in which I will put some pictures soon of many of my Labrador favorites from years past. And if you want a Labrador puppy, forget championships or distant ancestry and find a puppy whose sire and dam (both of them) are the kinds of dogs you want to see in a puppy. That above all else, will give you the kind of dog you want. Stay away from field-trial dogs and pointing Labradors.

Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613 or e-mail lightninridge@windstream.net