Read the book: «Labrador: The Story of the World’s Favourite Dog»

The tiny boat yawed and bucked in the mighty ocean. Huge Atlantic rollers crashed against the vertiginous cliffs as seagulls wheeled above. A lone lighthouse stood sentry, ready to warn shipping of the hazardous coastline.

My salt-encrusted hands gripped tightly to the oars as we, too, heaved into the surf. A rogue wave caught the front of the tiny boat, sending green water spilling in.

We were a pinprick on a tiny ocean.

I had come to Newfoundland and Labrador on the easternmost point of Canada – often described as Atlantic Canada. This is frontier country; a tough, rugged coastline where the people are as hardy as the geography. It holds a lot of similarities with its counterpart on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the Western Isles of Scotland. The flora and fauna reminded me of Scotland, only larger.

I was with local rower – Pete – on one of the original fishing skiffs, a tiny two-man wooden boat that looked like it would be better suited to a pond than an angry ocean. These were the craft with which the fishermen had, in better times, caught the cod that were once so prolific in these waters.

Like a detective following a trail, I had come here in search of the Labrador. It seemed wrong, coming to a place that was also named after a different breed altogether, but all the evidence seemed to conclude that Newfoundland did play a role in the evolution of the Labrador Retriever.

Despite a lifetime of travels to Canada, this was my first visit to this part of the country. A Canadian father had ensured plenty of summers on the lakes of Ontario, where I spent my time canoeing, swimming and fishing. Of course, there was also a dog. A mutt called Bejo that had somehow been rescued from the streets of Marrakech, in Morocco, by a family friend and had been flown to the Canadian lakes.

I had long wanted an excuse to visit this remote corner of one of the least-populated countries on Earth, and now here it was …

My journey to Atlantic Canada began in the rather inauspicious surroundings of Dublin, in Ireland, from where I caught my transatlantic flight to St John’s, which must surely be the shortest hop across the Atlantic Ocean. We had barely taken off when we were landing again, just four hours later.

St John’s is a rugged working port. I’m sure it had once been a very beautiful harbour, but the heavy industry and the presence of dozens of offshore supply ships servicing the oil industry give it a gritty industrial feel. The supply ships tower above the small buildings of the city.

St John’s is considered by many to be the ‘big smoke’, but even with the majority of the region’s employment opportunities and, therefore, population, it has a small-town feel. Colourful, clapboard-style houses dot the streets as reminders of the city’s heritage. This is pioneering country.

Labrador and Newfoundland are collectively one state. Bordering Quebec on the west and the rugged Atlantic to the east, it covers more than 29,000 kilometres of coastline. At nearly 150,000 square kilometres, it is the same size as Japan.

I had come here, not for the landscape, nor the people, but in search of a dog famed for its fierce loyalty and ferocious love of food. A dog intricately tied to British culture. A dog beloved of families across the world and championed by countless prime ministers and presidents. A dog both used to sell loo roll and owned by royalty: the humble Labrador Retriever.

The story of the Labrador is as intriguing as it is complex. It is estimated that there are between 300 and 400 different breeds of dog in the world – the exact numbers are disputed by various kennel clubs which have yet to recognise certain breeds that have been crossbred over time. Of course, all breeds began with some sort of crossbreeding, but how did the Labrador evolve?

Breeds of dogs are variously broken down by the English Kennel Club into Hound, Terrier, Gundog, Utility, Pastoral, Toy and Working. While many will class breeds according to what they were bred to do, you can also categorise them according to geography: Welsh Corgi, Yorkshire Terrier, Afghan Hound, Bernese Mountain Dog, the Maltese, Rhodesian Ridgeback, English Setter, Hungarian Vizla, German Shepherd, Irish Setter, Spanish Water Dog, Manchester Terrier, Norfolk Terrier … The list of dogs with a geographical tie is long so I won’t bore you, but you get the gist.

The heritage of the Labrador, however, is much more complex and confused. Indeed, dozens of books have been published over the years with conflicting stories about the history of the world’s most popular breed.

While it is widely accepted that the Yorkshire Terrier, for example, was developed in the nineteenth century to catch rats in the clothing mills of the historic county in Northern England, and the Border Collie was a working dog cultivated to herd livestock in the borderlands between England and Scotland, the Labrador does not actually originate from Labrador, the bleak northerly mainland region of Canada. I, like many, had always assumed it was named after its geographical namesake in Northern Canada, but in fact the breed has its roots, by way of Europe, in the Atlantic island of Newfoundland where, in the late eighteenth century, fishermen relied on a working sea dog of similar appearance to retrieve fish. In researching this book and the history of this humble breed, I have ventured from Portugal to Labrador, Newfoundland, and then full circle back to Europe.

The origin of the Labrador is a slightly confusing issue, not least because ‘Newfoundland and Labrador’ is the umbrella name given to the vast easternmost province of Canada. The two distinct land masses that make up the province are separated by the Strait of Belle Isle, a hazardous, ice-choked, fog-wraithed, treacherously tidal channel approximately 125 kilometres long and ranging between a maximum width of 60 kilometres to 15 kilometres at its narrowest.

In all probability, the nineteenth-century Britons lumped the far-flung area and its associations together just as writers of that era indiscriminately use the words retriever and spaniel. But there are two distinct territories under one geographical title and – just to complicate things – two dog breeds associated with the province, each named after the wrong region. The short-coated Labrador is actually from Newfoundland; and the shaggy-coated Newfoundland emerged at about the same time in Labrador.

The early settlement of Labrador was tied to the sea by the Inuit and Innu people. It is widely assumed that the Vikings were the first Europeans to sight the land but it wasn’t until the Portuguese explorer João Fernandes Lavrador mapped the coast that the region was settled. Today the region is sparsely populated, with around 27,000 residents, most of whom work the land for its iron ore.

So how did this popular family dog, with its lust for food and cuddles, come to live in such an inhospitable terrain and climate?

To further confuse the mystery, another ‘geographical breed’, the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, comes from Nova Scotia, just south of Labrador and Newfoundland. All three dogs have distinctive webbed feet, a water-resistant undercoat and incredible swimming abilities – they evidently share some genetic stock. Most historians agree that the native inhabitants of Newfoundland, the Beothuks, did not have dogs. Nor did the pre-Inuit settlers, the Dorset Eskimos. Others insist there would have been Inuit, Innu and Mi’kmaq dogs left by the region’s Aboriginal peoples, as well as descendants of the Norse dogs. We must assume therefore that the Labrador descends from a mix of genes from the various dogs taken on board ship by fishermen from Spain, Portugal, France and England when they set sail to fish for cod in the waters off Newfoundland.

Dogs were needed to guard the camps, to hunt for game and to kill rats and mice. They were a useful bit of kit. Breeds traditionally taken on ships from the early sixteenth century onwards included mastiffs, bloodhounds, spaniels and terriers. It is probably fair to assume there would have been a number of crossbreeds. Residents of Newfoundland kept no records or census of the dogs on the island so there aren’t many clues for breed enthusiasts to mull over. In a footnote in his Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (1868), Charles Darwin states that the Newfoundland dog is believed to have originated from a cross between an Esquimaux dog and a large, black St Hubert hound. Others point out that Inuit dogs thrive in cold weather, but not cold water.

It still seems amazing to me that some of the world’s most prolific swimming dogs came from some of the world’s coldest water. But then maybe that was the point. The people had to find an alternative to getting in the water themselves.

But the Labrador is a dog that loves to curl up on the sofa or sprawl on the bed. They are never happier than with their heads lolling out of the open window of a Land Rover speeding along a country lane. Newfoundland and Labrador? Surely this was the land of the hard-working pastoral collie – a dog happier outside and often without human contact. There seems to be a great contradiction in provenance and character.

Today it is very fashionable to mix breeds together; the Labradoodle is a Labrador and Standard Poodle cross, the Puggle is a Pug and a Beagle, but what breeds might have mated to create the Labrador as we now know it?

Many canine historians believe their genetic make-up owes something in particular to the Spanish Black Pointer (the aptitudes of obedience to a master and of being hard-wired to follow a scent) and to the Basque or Portuguese Shepherd Dog, which is notable for a herding instinct and a close sense of territory. But it was from a very large gene pool that dogs were bred on an ad hoc basis and trained over 300 years to meet the specific needs of the fishermen. ‘There were many ways in which they could be useful,’ wrote Wilson Stephens, in an article entitled ‘The Lost Years of the Labrador’ in The Field in December 1989. ‘The slippery decks of trawlers, heeling when the nets were being hauled overside on the cod banks of Newfoundland, sent many a hard-won fish sliding into, and often through, the scuppers. Retrieving out of water may have been the ships’ dogs’ first and basic role. Not retrieving fish only. A sailing ship’s rigging included many small components also likely to be washed overboard – blocks, pins, lines, and so on; a fetcher-back was more than worth his keep. Who ever saw a better dog in water than a fit and confident Labrador? It is bred into them.’

The harsh, rugged isolation of Newfoundland and the specific traits required of the dogs allowed the ancestors of the Labrador to evolve into fine, shapely dogs. The terrain and climate required them to be sure-footed on land and broad-chested to swim strongly and surf the strong and choppy Atlantic waves. They needed to be sturdy enough to haul wood on land and drag fish nets ashore, yet small enough not to overpower a fisherman’s two-man dory craft. The fishermen bred these dogs, presumably matching sires with exceptional traits to dams of a similar calibre. Or maybe it was more rudimentary, simply monitoring the accidental intermixing. Whatever the technique, it somehow produced the much-loved, distinctive, water-loving retriever of today.

Like their namesake, the people of Labrador bear a unique mix of cultural heritage, borne of their historical roots. Their accent and language is a mix of Scottish, Irish and a mid-Atlantic drawl. On first hearing I was sure they were from Southern Ireland. To be honest I couldn’t make head nor tail of what my cab driver was saying on the journey from the airport to St John’s, with his heavy Irish drawl spoken in a kind of pidgin twang. Indeed, there are more varieties of English spoken in Labrador than anywhere else in the world. No wonder I couldn’t understand a word.

The Aboriginal population of what is now Newfoundland and Labrador can be divided into three ethnic groups – the Inuit (once called the Eskimos), the Innu and the Beothuk – but the current-day population owes more to its European roots, being largely the south-west of England. Fisherfolk from Dorset and Devon emigrated in the hope of making their fortunes with the cod banks, but it is more likely the small number of Highland Scots and the Southeastern Irish settlers who had the most profound effect on the culture and heritage of Newfoundland and Labrador’s current-day population. They bear the ruddy cheeked, wind-weathered appearance of island folk. Having spent so much time in Canada as a child, I was struck by how un-North American this region was. It felt they had more in common with Europe than with their Canadian brothers.

The mix-up between the names and geographical roots of the Newfoundlands and Labradors occurred once the dogs were imported into England and the Americas. The dog more commonly associated with Labrador became the Newfoundland – the giant, shaggy, bear-like dog beloved of poets Lord Byron and Emily Dickinson and immortalised as Nana in Peter Pan – and the smaller, close-coated dog (also known as the St John’s Water Dog, the St John’s Dog, the Lesser Newfoundland or the Little Newfoundler) became known as ‘the Labrador’.

The word labrador has dual Portuguese associations. For a start, the region of Labrador in Canada was named after the explorer João Fernandes Lavrador, who in 1499 and 1500 mapped the coastline, labelling the vast, scarcely imaginable area ‘Labrador’ on topographical charts that circulated during this period. Labrador or lavradore also means ‘labourer’ or ‘workman’ in both Portuguese and old Spanish.

The Portuguese predominated other European fishermen during the opening decades of the sixteenth century, and the men who subsequently undertook hazardous voyages to these inhospitable waters would have been gritty, rugged sea hands inured to working the sails around the clock and enduring cramped conditions. So the word was ‘in the air’ in any contemporary consideration of the nature of the venture. Both in terms of the region and of the prevailing sailing-cum-fishing nation which set an example of reliance on its sea dogs, the name ‘Labrador’ was wholly appropriate for a hard-working dog valued by generations of fishing crews trawling the chilly waters for bumper cod harvests.

It seems indisputable that there is a Portuguese connection, but the earliest references all seem to originate in Newfoundland. One of the earliest mentions comes from J. B. Jukes in his book Excursions In and About Newfoundland, written in 1842:

A thin, short-haired, black dog, belonging to George Harvey came off to us today. This animal was of a breed very different from what we understood by the term “Newfoundland Dog” in England. He had a thin tapering snout, a long thin tail and rather thin but powerful legs, with a lank body and hair short and smooth. These are the most abundant dogs of the country. They are by no means handsome, but are generally more intelligent and useful than the others. This one caught its own fish and sat on a projecting rock watching the water.

Could this have been one of the early forms for the Labrador? The breed that has become one of the most popular in the world? Loyal, handsome and hungry?

Newfoundland is still a rugged, bleak land. It is hard to imagine the hardships of those early settlers. This is a place dominated by the weather. Trees grow crouched and bowed to the curvature of the prevailing winds. The ocean bites into the coastline, tearing away at the cliffs. It is a region of natural wealth; where once the fish was king, today minerals and fossil fuels are the main export. The offshore oil rigs provide employment to those who still eke out a living here.

In one of the small working fishing harbours, a number of boats were tied alongside the quay – the Mystic Voyager, the Cape John Navigator, the June Gale – all weathered by the cruel ocean. Their nets lay on the harbour side, ready to be repaired.

I have spent time with trawlermen in the North Sea. It was one of the most miserable experiences of my life. A week being tossed around a mighty ocean, like a rubber duck in a washing machine. Cramped and stuffy. Hot and humid. I can feel the nausea returning just thinking about it. The sleep deprivation. The smell. The blood. The oil. The rust. The diesel fumes. It’s like groundhog day. Haul. Gut. Eat. Haul. Gut. Eat. Haul. I wouldn’t go back out on one of those trawlers if you paid me. Here, 4,800 kilometres away, on the opposite side of the ocean, are the same ships. The same fishermen. The same hopes and dreams. The same wild, violent ocean.

The skipper of my trawler had been capsized alongside his father and brother when he was just 18. They clung to one another in the frozen, black waters. Rescue came, but in the process he lost hold of his father. He was lost to the ocean – one of the many fisherfolk to perish in the cruel sea.

This part of the world holds many parallels to the Western Isles of Scotland where I have spent so much of my life. Indeed, it was here, on a remote island, that my love of the ocean and Labradors began.

The American novelist Annie Proulx gives a measure of the bleak landscape in her bestselling novel The Shipping News, which is set in Newfoundland. One of her characters muses on the landscape:

This place, she thought, this rock, six thousand miles of coast blind-wrapped in fog. Sunkers under wrinkled water, boats threading tickles between ice-scabbed cliffs. Tundra and barrens, a land of stunted spruce men cut and drew away.

How many had come here, leaning on the rail as she leaned now. Staring at the rock in the sea. Vikings, the Basques, the French, English, Spanish, Portuguese. Drawn by the cod, from the days when massed fish slowed ships on the drift for the passage to the Spice Isles, expecting cities of gold. The lookout dreamed of roasted auk or sweet berries in cups of plaited grass, but saw crumpling waves, lights flickering along the ship rails. The only cities were of ice, bergs with cores of beryl, blue gems within white gems, that some said gave off an odor of almonds. She had caught the bitter scent as a child.

Shore parties returned to ship blood-crusted with insect bites. Wet, wet, the interior of the island, they said, bog and marsh, rivers and chains of ponds alive with metal-throated birds. The ships scraped on around the points. And the lookout saw shapes of caribou folding into fog.

Walking along the coastal paths of Newfoundland, the vegetation and trees had become a vivid red, orange and yellow. I wandered among the fishermen’s pots and nets. Traditionally this is fishing country and the dozens of trawlers moored along the harbour were now wrapping up for the season, hunkering down for the winter. It wouldn’t be long until the snow and ice arrived; freezing the harbour and isolating the tiny communities further. The locals I met on my travels in the region had told me of ‘black dogs’ that still roamed these beaches; wild and untamed, some believed these were the ancestors of the Labrador.

Beyond the city limits, the weak late autumn sunshine illuminated the cliff edge on the most easterly tip of North America – Cape Spear in Newfoundland. Huge rolling waves crashed against the rocky foreshore below as flocks of gulls feasted on a passing shoal of fish. The next stop due east of here was to be Cabo da Roca, in Portugal, the most westerly point of mainland Europe, on which I had stood many times and wondered what its North American opposite looked like. Now I knew.

The mighty lighthouse is a reminder of the treacherous nature of the ocean that has cost many ships and their crews their lives. This is a hard, tough land. Newfoundland itself is a huge island, almost twice the size of Great Britain, and for many months of the year the island is buried under 3 metres of snow, but during the summer months, the islanders have a brief respite from the cold. Although even in the summer months, Atlantic Canada is reminded of its Arctic geography, as swarms of icebergs descend on the island. Locals make good use of these icebergs, though, by making iceberg water, iceberg beer and iceberg vodka. They even collect washed-up shards which they then use in their gin and tonics.

Perhaps the most astonishing industry, here, is that of the iceberg ‘movers’, those individuals tasked with either blowing up or tugging away mighty icebergs that are blocking harbours or are in danger of damaging property. There is even a website called Iceberg Finder where ‘iceberg ambassadors’ track the movement of these mighty bergs, which are more than 10,000 years old and can weigh in excess of 10 million tonnes. Icebergs also bring polar bears – which use them as ocean rafts, sometimes depositing the fearsome predators close to human habitations – which has given rise to another local expert, the polar bear ‘relocator’. Today, though, there are no signs of icebergs, polar bears or the sperm whales that migrate through these waters, just a vast grey ocean.

In another strange twist in the tail and connection to yet another country, the Labrador – now the most popular pet dog in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Israel and Australia – ultimately owes its status to John Cabot, the famous Italian navigator and explorer whose name is honoured in streets, towers, academies, universities and golf courses around the world. Cabot’s ‘discovery’ of parts of North America under the commission of Henry VII in 1497 is believed to have been the first European encounter with the shores of North America since the Norse Vikings landed in around 1000 BC. Some historians think that either Nova Scotia or Maine was the location of his landfall, but the official position of the Canadian and British governments is that Giovanni Caboto – to give him his proper Italian name – landed at Cape Bonavista, a rugged headland on the east coast of Newfoundland. He found a Utopian land of plenty and his discovery heralded an era of heavy European fishing traffic which, in turn, brought about the development of the versatile sea dog we know today as the Labrador.

On 24 June 1497, Cabot set sail from the port of Bristol, then the second most important seaport in the country. About 3,500 kilometres later, his ships gingerly negotiated the rugged sea stacks and steep cliffs of a terra nova to touch land at Cape Bonavista. By all accounts, he made a quick turnaround, excited to share the news back in England that his expedition had indeed found, discovered and investigated something unknown to all Christian folk – an incredible wealth of fish stocks off these shores. His crew reported ‘the sea there is full of fish that can be taken not only with nets but with fishing-baskets’.

Today the cod or ‘baclau’ is still the regional dish. Fish and brewis, which is pronounced ‘brews’ is the most popular. The meal consists of cod and hard bread or hard tack. With the abundance of cod it became synonymous with many Newfoundland households as a delicacy to be served as a main meal. The recipe may vary, but the primary ingredients are always the same. Typically baclau uses salt fish which is soaked in water overnight to reduce the salt content, and hard bread which is also soaked in water overnight. The next day, the fish and bread are boiled separately until tender, and then both are served together.