How Britain fell in love with the Labrador: They'll eat anything including your flip-flops and now Ben Fogle's written a magical book about the breed he adores

  • Labradors are the most popular breed of dogs in Britain  
  • Ben Fogle has been a fan of dogs since a child but cherishes Labradors 
  • He's had three Labradors enjoying their tail-wagging demeanour

Labradors. I love everything about them. Their loyalty, companionship, work ethic, diligence, honesty, trust and unconditional love. 

For me they're the complete package, and it's no surprise that they're by far the most popular breed of dog in the UK, and indeed the world. 

The fact that they'll eat anything, even my flip-flops, and that they shed a tsunami of moulted fur that clogs up the house like tumbleweed each spring and autumn only endears them to me further.

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Labradors are the most popular breed of dog in the UK and for Ben Fogle it's not very hard to see why. Pictured: Ben with Bica, his in-laws’ black Lab, and Maggi in 2013

Labradors are the most popular breed of dog in the UK and for Ben Fogle it's not very hard to see why. Pictured: Ben with Bica, his in-laws’ black Lab, and Maggi in 2013

In fairness I love all dogs. Growing up above my father's veterinary surgery in central London we shared our flat with dogs, cats, parrots, veterinary nurses and an assortment of patients that would often spend the night. 

But dogs in particular loomed large. We had three golden retrievers – Honey, Liberty and Lexington – my best friends throughout adolescence, my loyal confidants. I could tell them things I couldn't tell my parents. When I got train-track braces, those dogs were the first to see my metallic smile. When I failed my exams or got rejected by a girl, they were the first to see the trickle of tears down my face.

I'm not sure when I first met Labradors but I think it was Poppy and Oscar, who belonged to a dear late friend of mine, Alice Benkert. It was breed love at first sight. The snout and the ears. The body shape and that personality. 

Storm on Christmas Day 2014

Storm on Christmas Day 2014

I've since had three Labradors in my life, and what attracts me most is that happy-go-lucky, bouncy, tail-wagging demeanour. They project a euphoria I find contagious. It's a refreshing antithesis to the cold modern world, and part of the reason I decided to write a book about these magnificent creatures.

The first Labrador love of my life was Inca. Our paths collided in 1999 when I'd been selected to be marooned on the island of Taransay in the Outer Hebrides for a year as part of the BBC social experiment Castaway. 

She would be my luxury item. Dad and I drove the length and breadth of the country in search of the perfect Lab. Too big, too small, bad hips, bad eyes – none of them met our requirements. Finally, through the Labrador Rescue Centre, we tracked down the last of a litter, a little girl I named Inca. It was love at first sight. 

We became inseparable. Our relationship was made stronger through isolation and the pressures of life on that Outer Hebridean island. When it all became too much for me, Inca and I would retreat together. When, a year later I emerged into the real world, we were a team.

The transition back to city life was tough for both of us but together we resettled. She accompanied me on photo shoots and TV shows but her greatest coup came when she helped find me a wife. It was 2004 and we were walking together in Hyde Park when I spotted a beautiful blonde girl running with her Labrador Maggi. It was fate, and Marina and I married with marzipan figurines of the two Labradors on our wedding cake. The dogs even came on our honeymoon.

The brutal, heartbreaking reality of having a dog of course is that we will inevitably outlive our beloved hound. Losing Inca was like losing a limb. She'd had a good life. She lived to 12. I cried for a week. I suffered panic attacks. Only those who have loved a dog will understand the grief. We scattered her ashes in the park and she has a sapling dedicated to her, Inca's Tree. I hang a Bonio biscuit from it on her birthday each year.

It's incredible how children turn your life inside out. The arrival of my son Ludo in 2009 and then, a year and a half later, his sister Iona are the best things that ever happened to Marina and me, but sometimes life throws you a curve ball. 

Our third child Willem was stillborn last year. It was the worst week of my life, but it was then that we decided to get a puppy. Maggi had reached the grand old age of 14 and Ludo and Iona, now five and four, were both desperate for a young dog with energy. There was never a question of breed. It would be a Lab.

Ben as a child with Lexington, the retriever that led him to Labradors

Ben as a child with Lexington, the retriever that led him to Labradors

I shall never forget the joy and happiness on Marina and the children's faces as we sat clutching armfuls of yellow and black Labradors at the rescue centre. Marina and the children chose a little black girl we named Storm and she blew into our lives like a tornado. The children love her. I mean really love her. When I see my son lying down next to her I get flashbacks to my own childhood.

So where did the Labrador actually come from? Their origins are complex, combining Portugal, Newfoundland and Britain in their ancestry. They were originally Canadian fishing dogs, whose ancestors were taken on to work on the Portuguese cod trawlers off the remote Canadian island of Newfoundland. 

They first came to Europe around 200 years ago when those trawlers docked at Poole in Dorset on their way back to Portugal, and this is where these 'Little Newfoundland' dogs were first sighted in Britain. Actually the name Labrador is slightly confusing. 

Newfoundland And Labrador is the umbrella name given to two distinct land masses that make up the vast easternmost province of Canada, but the short-coated Labrador is actually from Newfoundland while the shaggy-haired Newfoundland emerged around the same time in Labrador.

It still seems amazing to me that some of the world's most prolific swimming dogs came from the cold waters of Canada's Atlantic coast. But then maybe that was the point. People had to find an alternative to getting in the water themselves. 

Ben at London's first ever Labrador Flash Mob in Holland Park to promote his new book

Ben at London's first ever Labrador Flash Mob in Holland Park to promote his new book

The dogs' swimming skills were much talked about. They feature in old stories as near-mythical water dogs, rescuers of sailors' pots, lines and nets in icy waters and blustery gales, big-hearted, eminently trainable and intelligent. 

They could swim with a rope in their mouth and sometimes – so the stories went – paddled out to the aid of ships in distress. They retrieved whatever their master bade them and dog trading became a lucrative subsidiary for the fishermen.

One 19th-century admirer of the dog's skills was the second Earl of Malmesbury, an MP and keen game sportsman. A large part of his estate at Hurn in Dorset encompassed the floodplain between the River Stour and the River Avon, north east of Bournemouth. 

At the time, the River Stour was habitually liable to overflow in winter, creating large watery meadows several feet deep; for half the year it was, as one observer put it, 'a minor Venice'. No wonder he was fascinated by the amazing water dogs he discovered in nearby Poole – they were excellent at retrieving downed game from the flooded meadows – and he promptly started a breeding programme.

At around the same time, the fifth Duke of Buccleuch and his brother Lord John Scott started importing dogs from a Newfoundland fishing fleet that sailed into the River Clyde to use as gundogs on the Queensberry estates in the Scottish borders. They had also realised what an extraordinary dog the Labrador was and so established their own kennels in around 1835.

One of the duke's dogs, Brandy, earned his name on his journey across the Atlantic. Having been sent overboard in a heavy sea to fetch the cap of one of the crew, the young dog spent two hours in the water before he could be picked up again, by which point he was so exhausted the sailors had to revive him with brandy. 

The duke and his friend the tenth Earl of Home loved their dogs so much that when they went on a yachting holiday to Naples in 1839 they took their favourite Labs – Moss and Drake – with them.

By the early 1880s the original Buccleuch strain had all but died out, just six decades on from those original purchases on the Clyde. This could well have signalled the end of the Scottish lineage of the Labrador, were it not for the third Earl of Malmesbury, who 'gave the duke a pair, descended from our own imported dogs' and the bloodline was continued when they were mated with the duke's dogs.

So the Labrador has gone from being a fisherman's companion to a specialist wildfowl retriever to the world's most popular domestic dog. Now, just like Inca, Storm has started joining me as I work but her life is a long way from her ancestors' who worked those nets off Newfoundland 300 years ago. 

It's estimated there are as many as 30 million Labradors in the world. No one really knows. But what I discovered writing my book is that the Lab is the ultimate example of man's best friend. n

Labrador: The Story Of The World's Favourite Dog by Ben Fogle is published by William Collins, £20. Order copies at mailbookshop.co.uk for £15, p&p free, until 31 October.

 

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