The Labrador Retriever is the most popular sporting dog in the world today. This book is the Lab's story and the stories of the many interesting men and women who contributed to his development from a hardy working dog swimming lines and nets between fishing boats and catching fish in icy waters off newfoundland, to becoming the favorite retriever for driven grouse and pheasants of a few noble English and Scottish families who literally saved the dog from extinction.

You will discover how the first Labs came to the United States and why they were not widely popular, and how field trial competition changed the direction of his American history to make him the favorite waterfowl and upland bird retriever he is today.

In researching this book, Richard Wolters has done a remarkable piece of detective work. He traveled over twenty thousand miles in the United States, Newfoundland, England and Scotland. Many months were spent in university libraries searching through old manuscripts and papers, researching the Newfoundland fishing industry in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

During his travels, Mr. Wolters discovered the "missing link" in the Lab's history in a remote area of Newfoundland: the original water dog that did not get back to England to become the Labrador Retriever. From other newly discovered evidence, he builds a strong case for this theory on the origin of the Lab.

200 pages of great reading with lots of color and black and white photographs!

My late father had collected many fine books - this is one from his estate. He often clipped newspaper articles about books in his collection or their authors, and kept them in the book. Some are included in this book.