Labrador Retriever

The Labrador is good cheer on four legs. It walks into the room like the best news of the day, greets you as though you'd just returned from the other side of the world (when you only went out to the bins), and has that wonderful gift for turning even the greyest Monday into something bearable. And yet it wasn't born on the couch at all. The Labrador comes from harsh Newfoundland, where its ancestors worked alongside fishermen: they leapt into the icy Atlantic after fish escaping the nets, hauled ropes between boats, and knew no such things as “too cold,” “too wet,” or “too heavy.” From those maritime tough guys it inherited a waterproof, double coat, a thick rudder of a tail that it paddles with like an otter, and a life's program written into its very name: retriever literally means “the one who brings back.” And it has to be said that the Labrador took that name deadly seriously — except that it understands it far more broadly than anyone ever planned.

Because the Labrador brings things. A ball, a stick, a slipper (usually not the matching one), the TV remote, and for want of anything better — its own bowl, which it waves about with a pride worthy of the most precious trophy. Without something in its mouth it feels a little incomplete, so a greeting without a gift it regards as a second-rate greeting. And it brings more than just objects: it's Labradors that today lead the blind through busy streets, find people buried and lost, and work as canine therapists — professional deliverers of comfort. And in its free moments this born optimist agrees to everything: to a walk at any hour, to a guest it's seeing for the first time in its life and considers family after five minutes, and to water in any form — a pond, the sea, or a muddy puddle work on it like a personalized invitation, which it enters at a run, with the look of a dog returning to work after a decidedly too-long holiday. It grows up slowly, and in many respects will never grow up at all: inside the large body of an adult dog there usually lives a puppy that has just invented the best game in the world and absolutely has to share it with you.

There is, however, one thing the Labrador brings home a little too eagerly: appetite. And it's not a matter of ordinary greed. A Labrador eats as though someone were about to cancel every meal in the world. The bowl vanishes before you've had time to put the measuring cup down. Whatever falls on the floor simply ceases to exist. And the look it fixes on you at the table isn't hunger — it's a negotiation in which you've been on the losing side from the start. Science has, moreover, given it quite a serious alibi: researchers from Cambridge discovered that roughly one in four Labradors carries a mutation of the POMC gene, called outright the “hunger gene” — such a dog is hungrier between meals and at the same time burns fewer calories at rest. Doubly uphill. To put it most simply: it often really doesn't know when it's had enough, and that isn't a matter of character but of biology. Which is why the calorie accounting has to be done on your side of the bowl.

And that's not an unpleasant chore at all — it's one of the most tender things you can do for it. Because that great appetite has its price, and it's always the same thing that pays it: its health and your years together.

The Labrador gives you one of the simplest and most sincere forms of love the world knows — unconditional joy that you simply exist. It expects little in return: a bit of exercise, a bit of water, something to carry in its mouth, and you nearby. The only thing it can't bring itself is moderation at the bowl — so when it looks up at you from an empty bowl with the expression of the deeply wronged, remember that “no” too can be a form of tenderness.

Because a lean, healthy Labrador is a Labrador that for many, many years to come will keep bursting into the room like the best news of the day — a slipper in its mouth, its tail going like windshield wipers in a downpour, and that look on its face saying “look what I brought you.” That is its whole life and that is its love: to bring you the best it has. And of all the treasures a Labrador will bring you over your years together, the greatest will always be itself.