one of the puppies who was the last to be picked, probably because she was a rather scrawny-looking thing with a large swollen eye.
‘Wasp sting,’ the woman explained.
I examined her carefully.
‘No thanks,’ I said, rather heartlessly, handing her back.
As we pulled away from the yard, I caught a glimpse of her sad, dark eyes. Why was I turning my back on this lone pup? Suddenly I wasn’t sure, but as with love, I wanted to be certain. How would I know she was the one?
For the next few days I couldn’t stop thinking about her. It had been more than a week and I was certain she’d be gone.
‘She’s still here,’ said the woman down the phone.
I raced back. We pulled up to the house and were led into the living room, where the puppy was alone. She had been weaned from her mother, which meant separating the dogs. Immediately she ran up to me and licked my face. The swelling on her eye had subsided and, away from her greedy siblings, she was now much rounder, with a bulging pink belly.
She gazed up at me with her hazel eyes as I ran my fingers through her thick black hair. I nuzzled my nose behind her ear and inhaled her scent. It was instant love. I had always been told that I’d find her, and now I really had found ‘the one’. I named her Inca.
I held her close as we walked out into the crisp winter night, but as we approached the car I heard a commotion in the background.
‘Get back here!’ cried a voice.
The puppy’s mother had broken free and came bounding over. She jumped up and licked Inca clean across the face, then lifted her ear. I am not one to over-anthropomorphise our animals, but I swear she was wishing her luck. She was whispering something into that little dog’s ear, and I’d like to think she was telling her to look after me.
As quickly as she had appeared, Inca’s mother vanished back into the darkness. Her owner looked on in astonishment, a tear in her eye.
And so began a friendship that would change things forever. Little did I realise then how much this little dog would form, shape and create my life. She would change it in ways I never thought possible. The story of Inca is, ultimately, the story of me.
Inca and I became inseparable. I was still living in my childhood bedroom in my parents’ house, and I can vividly remember setting up her little crate at the foot of my bed, feeling both fear and excitement at the journey that lay ahead.
My life of blissful selfishness was over and a new one of selflessness was beginning. I genuinely think that those two words separate dog owners from non-dog owners.
I guess, on the face of it, it is a little strange that we invite this hairy animal into our homes. We share our lives with a creature that was once undomesticated and wild. I’ve always been fascinated as to why we keep dogs. Why we love dogs. Why we mourn our dogs when they go. Of course, it varies from culture to culture and from country to country. Some argue it is a sign of development; the more developed a country the higher the number of pet dogs. The sharp spike in the number of pet dogs in China, with its emerging middle-class population, seems to back that up.
By the very late nineteenth century in Britain, the popularity of the Labrador was on the rise and it wasn’t long before the Royals got in on the act, in a connection with the breed that has endured right up to the present day.
The first Labrador kennels were established at Sandringham by King Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, in 1879 to house a hundred dogs, and the Sandringham kennels and the Labradors that are bred there have become firm favourites of the Royal Family as a whole. In fact, it may come as a surprise to many that the Queen is as fond of her Labradors as she is of her infamous Corgis.
In many ways the Corgis are the public face of the Queen’s canine companions, but the Labrador is the private love of her life. I was once told a story that the Queen has several Land Rovers custom-made with windscreen wipers on the inside. Apparently these were specifically adapted for her Labradors, who have a tendency to steam cars up from the inside out.
The Queen takes a very great interest in the Sandringham kennels. Since her accession to the throne in 1952, the breeding programme there has gone from strength to strength, culminating in the training of five Field Trial Champions. All the puppies born at Sandringham are named personally by the Queen and are registered at the Kennel Club with the prefix Sandringham.
At any one time, the kennels are home to about 20 dogs of all ages, including Labradors and Cocker Spaniels – ranging from the older and more experienced gundogs used by members of the Royal Family during the shooting season to the younger dogs under training as gundogs.
In addition to providing dogs for the Royal Family, the kennels also supply the Estate gamekeepers with working Labradors and Spaniels.
In a bout of hopeful optimism I sent a note to Her Majesty’s equerry asking if it would be possible to visit the Queen’s Labrador kennels at Sandringham. I was politely informed that the kennels are extremely private and that a visit would be impossible. While the Corgis are frequently photographed at the Queen’s side, her Labradors are rarely seen and it appeared that was the way she wanted it to remain.
Records of the breed were kept by the Buccleuch estate in Scotland at around the same time that Edward VII was beginning his Labrador breeding programme, and it is these that note the arrival of two chocolate puppies or ‘liver pups’ in 1890. Could these have been the progenitors for the future of chocolate Labradors? The royal household would undoubtedly have given the liver pups the ultimate royal seal of approval.
But while the Labrador was finally establishing itself on our shores, across the Atlantic a problem was looming that threatened the strength and integrity of the breed in Britain. In 1885 the Newfoundland government, worried about the number of dogs in the region, passed the Sheep Protection Act which gave local government the right to impose a dog licensing tax as well as the right to prohibit dogs completely.
Inevitably, dog importations were affected. Colonel Peter Hawker wrote in the Instructions to Young Sportsmen that, ‘Poole was, till of late years, known to be the best place to buy Newfoundland dogs; either just imported or broken in; until they became more scarce, owing (the sailors observe) to the strictness of those tax gatherers.’
The 1885 Act was meant to encourage sheep raising by reducing the number of potential predators, but the result was to kill the Labrador export trade. The Quarantine Act of 1895 created another barrier to the importing of dogs. The Act prohibited dogs from entering Great Britain without a licence and without first undergoing a strict six-month quarantine to prevent the introduction of rabies.
The future of the Labrador hung in the balance.
Between 1890 and 1930 the multiple taxes, restrictions and paperwork meant no new dogs were imported to Britain and the results were quickly felt. This was the moment when ‘breed mixing’ began. Some breeders began mixing Labradors with Setters and Pointers. ‘Bearing in mind the high qualities attributed to pure Labradors, it is somewhat strange that the breed should have been allowed to degenerate by the various crosses of Setter and Spaniel blood,’ wrote Hugh Dalziel in his 1897 publication, British Dogs, Volume III, referring to new problems such as a hard mouth and sulky temper.
Within the tight circle of enthusiasts there was a move to preserve the purity of the breed. In 1903 the Labrador Retriever was recognised by the Kennel Club. In 1904, it was granted breed status and listed separately as a member of the Gundog Group. The breed standard was written, and it was almost identical to the one that holds sway today.
During the first decade of the twentieth century, Labrador Retrievers rose to prominence in the show ring and in field trials, and were also much favoured gundogs. By 1913, they were so well entrenched in the world of dog ownership that their qualities as working dogs were causing an emotive debate. The criticism that was voiced that they could be a ‘bit hard in the mouth’ was queried by Frank Townend Barton in his authoritative volume, Gun Dogs. The ideal retriever is a ‘soft-mouthed’ dog, a fetcher which picks up game