The dog on the left is Badger, a purebred Labrador from the United Kingdom. Photo by Glyn Walsh.
When Labradors have a bit of white on them, I’ve always assumed that this feature was indicative of their water dog ancestry. However, I’ve never seen Labrador with as much white on its body as I’ve seen on dogs in the photos of the St. John’s water dog.
But then received this photo of this Labrador in the United Kingdom. His name is Badger, and he’s nothing like any Labrador I’ve seen. He’s the first white-marked Labrador I’ve seen that had these extensive white marking.
I have previously written about golden retrievers with extensive white markings.
But to see a Labrador with these markings is unusually moving. It literally is like looking at a modern St. John’s water dog. It is like an apparition rising out of the Labrador’s past to tell us what these dogs were once like.
I say he’s the first Labrador like this I’ve seen, but St. John’s water dogs had white markings. This feature appears in golden retrievers, Labradors, and other retrievers, although it is very unusual to find one with such extensive white markings.
You should note that the Labrador on the right has a few white hairs on its chest. Normally, that is the extent of the white markings one will on a retriever. (Of course, tollers are the big exception to this rule.)
I’ve seen newborn goldens with white blazes and large white spots on their chests, which then disappear as the puppy matures. I have also seen them white feet and white tail tips that very often last throughout the dog’s lifetime. (My first golden had a white-tipped tail. This feature always existed, but it did not become obvious until she grew older.).
It is very interesting to see these old features in our modern dogs.
Dogs like Badger cannot be as rare as is commonly assumed. If it is that pervasive in the golden retriever, which is a more distant descendant of the St. John’s water dog, it would stand to reason that it would be more common in the Labrador, which is much closer to the St. John’s water dog.
In the old days, dogs with such markings were “bucketed,” which means they were literally drowned in buckets of water as newborn whelps. Yellow and chocolate Labs and similarly colored wavy/flat-coats experienced this culling until a few people (like the 1st Baron Tweedmouth) decided to breed for these minority colors. I’m sure pups with white markings were also culled in this manner.
But even such rigorous selective breeding couldn’t get rid of this feature. It continues to pop up.
And it’s great to see a dog like Badger.
He allows us to see a bit what the past was once like. Before there were Labradors, there were black and white, smooth-coated water dogs from Newfoundland that looked a lot like Badger. I can see him sitting upon the prow of cod fisherman’s boat as the vessel sails into the rich fishing grounds of the Grand Banks. He stares at the water with great intensity, waiting for the second that a fish appears on the line and he is given the command to haul it in. In the winter, I can see him wandering the uplands with his master, casting back and forth in search of ptarmigan to flush towards the gun.
He certainly gets my imagination running.
