Where do Labrador retrievers come from? The breed's real origin

Part 1

The short answer: Newfoundland, not Labrador

The Labrador Peninsula and the island of Newfoundland sit close together in eastern Canada, and that closeness is part of why the breed's name causes confusion. Labrador retrievers did not develop on the peninsula that shares their name. Instead, they descend from the St. John's water dog, a landrace that formed on the island of Newfoundland. Sources place this dog's development sometime between the 1500s and the late 1700s, as European fishing dogs were brought to the region and bred there.

Part 2

The St. John's water dog and its work with fishermen

The St. John's water dog was built to work. Fishermen used the dogs to haul nets and lines to shore and to retrieve fish and gear that had slipped free in the water. The dog would swim out, take a rope or net in its mouth, and pull it back through the current to the boat. Its coat was short and dense enough to repel cold water without collecting ice, a detail long-haired dogs could not match in that climate.

• In 1780 the Governor of Newfoundland limited households to one dog, a rule aimed at protecting sheep, and dog numbers on the island fell.
• Later laws taxed dog ownership, with a higher tax on female dogs, so fewer female water dogs were raised.
• Newfoundland's dog restrictions, combined with a British quarantine law brought in to keep out rabies, cut off the supply of new dogs to England.
• The St. John's water dog itself became extinct, with the last known dogs recorded in the 1980s.

Part 3

How the dogs crossed the Atlantic to England

Poole, in southern England, was an important port for the Newfoundland fishing trade, and ships carrying cod routinely docked there with their crews' dogs aboard. English sportsmen who saw the dogs retrieve in the harbor were impressed enough to start importing them. The second Earl of Malmesbury was hunting with St. John's water dogs by 1809 and kept a kennel devoted to the breed near Poole. The Duke of Buccleuch ran a separate breeding program in Scotland, and the two family lines were eventually combined in the 1880s. Your dog's family tree runs through English country estates as much as it does through Newfoundland fishing docks.

Part 4

From working dog to recognized breed

The Kennel Club in Britain recognized the Labrador retriever as a distinct breed in 1903. The American Kennel Club registered its first Labrador in 1917. The name Labrador was used by the third Earl of Malmesbury, even though the dog's working ancestor came from Newfoundland rather than the Labrador Peninsula. Wherever your own Labrador was born, its registered breed name still points back to that old geographic mix-up.

Part 5

Why the name says Labrador, not Newfoundland

One theory is that people simply confused the St. John's water dog's home, Newfoundland, with the nearby Labrador Peninsula, and the mistaken name stuck once it was in use. A second theory points to the Spanish and Portuguese word for laborer, labrador or lavrador, and notes a Portuguese village with a similarly built working dog. The name is recorded in writing from the third Earl of Malmesbury, who wrote that he always called his dogs Labrador dogs and had kept the breed as pure as he could from his first imports. No one can say for certain which explanation is the true one.

Part 6

From rare import to the world's most popular dog

Once established in England, Labradors were bred and worked mainly as gun dogs, retrieving game on shooting estates. Early standards for the breed emphasized working ability, including a broad skull, otter tail, dense coat, and strong retrieving instinct. The Labrador has since become one of the most popular dog breeds, valued as a family companion as well as a working dog. None of this popularity changes where the breed actually started: on the docks of Newfoundland, doing hard, wet work for the people who fed it. That is worth remembering, since your Labrador's love of water traces back to ancestors bred for exactly that work.