Labrador: The Story of the World’s Favourite Dog. Ben Fogle

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      Despite her outdoor life, Inca hated the rain. In fact, the only thing she hated more than the rain was getting her paws muddy. She also detested anything uncomfortable under her paws: rocks, pebbles, pine cones, pine needles, mud, even puddles could sometimes stop her in her tracks. But rain was the worst for her. If it was raining outside and she was inside, she wasn’t going anywhere. She hated getting her coat wet almost as much as her paws.

      Like most Labradors, she lived for her stomach. Inca loved food. She loved food as much as she hated stepping on pine cones.

      Rather contradictorily, although she hated rain and puddles, she loved swimming. Like a moth to a flame, she was often left completely unable to stop herself. She would sleepwalk, like a zombie, into the water.

      I will never forget the first time I met the TV presenter Kate Humble. We had been teamed up by the BBC as a ‘TV couple’ to present a new series, Animal Park, following life behind the scenes at Longleat Safari Park.

      I had just returned from Nepal when I picked up a voice message from Kate suggesting I come to dinner at her house so that we get to know each other ahead of filming. Naturally, I arrived with Inca in tow. Kate opened the door, and before I had time to introduce myself, Inca had barged past, down the hall, through the kitchen and belly flopped into the large fish pond in the back garden.

      She re-emerged above the water line with pond weed on her head. I half expected a goldfish in her mouth. What’s more, she couldn’t get out. I had to kneel and haul her out by the scruff of her neck, at which point she shook the stinky water all over Kate, her kitchen and me.

      It gets worse … Inca then discovered Kate’s beloved rats. Yes, Kate kept several pet rats. She’s since got better taste and keeps dogs of her own, but back then she had rats and Inca loved them. She sat next to their cage, staring, drooling and singing.

      Inca had the best singing voice of any dog I know. Some might describe it as a kind of whine, but a whine is like a whinge – it’s a negative noise. Inca sang. It was a happy, positive noise. I liked to think she was serenading the rats, but the rats weren’t so sure. They hid in the corner as this giant, dripping wet, black dog sang to them.

      Kate eventually intervened, worrying that the canine song might lead to cardiac arrest on the rats’ part. And so we ate dinner to the smell of wet dog. It was the beginning of a long friendship, though, so it wasn’t all bad.

      Another time I remember visiting the late Duchess of Norfolk at her home, Bakers, in Berkshire. I was dating her granddaughter, Kinvara, and we had both been invited for Sunday lunch. As always, I arrived with Inca. It was a glorious summer day and once again Inca made a bee line for the water. In this instance, it wasn’t a fish pond but an immaculately clean swimming pool. Before I could stop her, Inca was sailing through the air into the azure waters.

      We weren’t invited back.

      Over the years I lost count of the number of times I hauled Inca from rivers, canals and even cattle troughs. And all this from a dog that didn’t like to get her paws wet. It was all or nothing with Inca.

      It is perhaps unsurprising, given its coastal place of origin, that the Labrador began its life as a Water Dog. ‘It was as a water-dog that the Labrador came into Britain. Regarded as a water-dog only, except by the few who treasured them, and ignored by most, Labradors spent the next 50 years in the well-cushioned obscurity which is the privilege of specialists,’ wrote Stephens.

      It was in Dorset that the Labrador was first treasured and ignored in Britain. I have always loved Dorset. I even lived there for four years, in the army town of Blandford, which I remember used to be called ‘An Interesting Georgian Town’. Perhaps it was because I spent some of my formative years there that I can feel my whole body relax when I arrive in the county. It has that unique ability to combine happy memories with a largely unchanged landscape.

      Often described as Thomas Hardy country, Dorset is defined by its rolling green farmland and its famous Jurassic coast. I have since returned many times both for work and pleasure. Indeed, I have spent the past few years based at Poole Harbour, making a series about one of the world’s largest natural harbours.

      Poole really is a place of contradictions, where hard-working fishermen moor their ships alongside Sunseeker super-yachts. There can be few places in the United Kingdom where there is such a jarring clash of the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’.

      Sandbanks peninsula is often described as the most expensive real estate in Great Britain, and even one of the most expensive in the world. Here, million-pound glass and steel structures look out onto the working waters where fishermen still ply their trades. That it was here that the Labrador was first discovered seems incredible.

      The harbour wall has changed very little in the last century. Close your eyes and you can still imagine the hubbub of trawlers emptying their holds of cod after their long voyage across the Atlantic. This would once have been a bustling place. It must have been quite a spectacle.

      Today, the small fishermen’s harbour is largely ignored. A handful of small boats still work the harbour and the ocean beyond, but Poole is as much a location for pleasure craft as it is for working boats.

      Next to the old harbour pilot office, overlooking the estuary and the Sunseeker factory beyond, is Poole Harbour’s museum. The museum is full of old artefacts covering the harbour’s rich history, where old, faded black-and-white photographs offer a small porthole into the bygone era. I asked the curator if he had ever heard about the harbour’s connection with the Labrador. Nobody in the museum knew anything. There were no records. No photographs. No documents or accounts. The only inference was the large section dedicated to Newfoundland and the Dorset families who emigrated in search of wealth.

      I sifted through hundreds of old photographs hoping to find the famous performing ‘black dogs’ that had captivated Lord Malmesbury, but there was nothing.

      It seems that Poole has long forgotten its part in the story of the evolution of the world’s most popular breed. So while the connection between Poole and Newfoundland is strong, Poole’s role in the import of the Labrador as we know it today remains a bit of a mystery. Back in London, at the British Library, I read the first page of the leather-bound Stud Book of the Duke of Buccleuch’s Labrador. The book names Ned (1882), sired by Lord Malmesbury’s Sweep (1877) and dam Lord Malmesbury’s Juno (1878), and describes him as ‘of a different category to any of the other dogs’ at the Duke’s kennels. According to the book, Ned was followed by Avon (1885), hailed as even better than Ned – sired by Lord Malmesbury’s Tramp, with Juno again the dam dog. The carefully kept stud book represented the start of an official record of the Labrador, but in retrospect, it is a rare and valuable СКАЧАТЬ