A good friend of mine is a member of a "hunting retriever" club. He knew I was in the market for a duck hunting yellow lab and set me up with a breeder he knew. The breeder had some excellent blood lines and I picked out an 8 week old pupply with championship pedigree. I named the puppy "dually" because of his wide stance.
I've was working on Dually's fetching at my pond in the pasture when one day my neighbor walked out to visit. She has a number of cats and one or two usually follow her around. While we were talking, a small baby rabbit darted out from the hedgerow. One of the cats was immediately on the rabbit, grabbed it by the neck and started running off. My neighbor ran after the cat and managed to get the bunny away from it. The poor bunny was in a state of shock after narrowly surviving the ordeal, but was no worse for wear. My neighbor took some time to calm it down and then decided to return it to the hedgerow. No sooner had she released it, when it panicked and ran straight back toward the waiting cat. Again, the cat jumped on it and started running off with its catch. My neighbor ran after the cat and in the chase the cat lost its grip on the rabbit. The rabbit was free and again panicked. It ran straight into the pond, proceeded to get tangled up in the algae and began drowning.
Immediately Dually sprung into action and lunged into the pond. He managed to swim through the algae and scoop up the rabbit in his mouth. He swam back to shore with the rabbit, placed it at my feet and assumed the "heal" position. I figured the bunny was either dead from drowning or tore up from the dogs grip. To my surprise, the bunny was unharmed, although catatonic from narrowly surviving three attempts on his life.
It just goes to show that the desire to hunt and fetch is deeply ingrained in the breeding of some of these dogs. Now I know that if I'm ever out duck hunting and a flock of rabbits flys over I can rest assured my dog will retrieve our downed game. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]
Our lab story;
We had a black lab, Tess, that was very well trained but not for hunting. In fact she was not very fond of the water. Since we lived on a lake that was a little strange.
We had one pair of ducks that would always nest on our property and Tess took it upon herself to protect them. One day a cat with a death wish tried to snatch and run with one of the baby ducks. Tess was off the deck and across the yard and the cat dropped the duckling for more speed. Tess stopped picked up the little one in her mouth and trotted back to mother duck and dropped it on the beach. The duckling swan to its mother and looked none the worse for wear. Tess then walked back up on the deck to finish her nap.
Labs are a wonderful breed and we do miss our Tess.
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