A Labrador Called Watson

Watson’s mum “Vixen” (dam) and his litter mates in the background. It’s always best to ask to see a puppy’s relatives as well seeing their general health records and heritage.

The relatives will give a really good indication of health/care and any respectable breeder should have no issues with this!

Meet Watson! 7 weeks old “red fox” labrador (working dog line).

(Please see introduction blog post for more details.)

This is a rough blog introduction for a “dogblr” which will feature our new member of the family “Watson” as he grows and develops into a field trained working dog.

After losing our late dog “Dill” the Labrador and mourning for a few months we decided that we were ready for a new addition. We are a passionate Labrador/gun-dog family so it was a no-brainer that we would get another Labrador.

Because Dill was a yellow Labrador we weren’t too keen to get another one. But we had a hard time deciding between chocolate and black until we were introduced to a new pelt colour phase “fox red”.

Technically “fox red” is classed as “yellow” but they couldn’t be more different. Fox red Labradors have beautiful amber/red coloured coats and sometimes a small white flash on the chest. We were smitten.So the search began…

We wanted a working line dog not a dog from a show/pet line. This is because in general working dogs are healthier and are certainly bred to higher standards of care, this is mostly because they must be able to do a proper job in the field and maintain their health for this purpose. But puppies are not usually for sale on the open market (which is a good thing) and you have to go through various circles to get a contact.

We eventually found one thanks to a local gun dog society… When the breeder was happy with us as a family and that one of us puppies would be properly worked and trained (not left to fall obese and bored as many labs are) he let us pick one out and so “Watson” was chosen.

He is currently 7 weeks old (see next following post on blog for photo!) and we will pick him up at 8 weeks. Training starts immediately and all will be documented in this blog! As well as informative posts about Labradors in general and I’m happy to give advice to people that wish to own one or have questions about working gun dogs.