MY FRIEND GUS has a sweet yellow lab named Sally. She often walks with him. Blessed with an enviable laid-back disposition, nothing seems to alarm or excite her. We had a wild red fox dash past us yesterday, and Sally never even tugged at her leash. Sally, like all dogs – all animals, in fact – does not ponder her own existence, and so she escapes the sort of soul-searching angst and personal anguish that besets us humans. Animals, wild or domestic, live and die without the pressure or concerns of thinking humans. They act, and react, not with cognition as we understand it, but with a limited nonhuman consciousness. My cat meows when she is hungry, and I feed her. If the front door is closed and she wants to go out, she meows. In either case, if I’m not around to respond, she returns quietly to where she was and waits without rancor or disappointment. If she was a thinker, I suspect, she’d think that thinking was stupid.
Labs are a very popular breed. Most dogs have a dominant trait. Just like the German Shepherd takes his guard duties very seriously, a Lab will retrieve birds from frigid waters long after other dogs have given up. They originated in Newfoundland, where it gets cold enough. A friend in Holland had lovely retrievers, all he had to do was raise both arms in the air and they would go crazy with excitement thinking that duck hunting time was here. Bill would disapprove; he thinks that is a cruel sport, which it is, but the Lab has been bred to be a gun dog and retrieve, and that will stay with him forever.
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Hello bowsprit.
I do agree with what you say about retrievers having the 'instinct' developed by breeding. However, my daughter has a working retriever which we are privileged to dog-sit quite regularly.
This dog is so into retrieving that it does so at every opportunity, which is quite endearing to it and to the breed as it shows an inbuilt desire to please the human carer. I also understand that they make good working dogs in other situations where there is a need to 'retrieve' such as with drugs and other illegal activities as well as rescue missions. The point I would make is that where this 'instinct' is developed for retrieving other animals killed in the name of cruel 'sports', it is surely the humans who are the instigators and perpetrators of the activity, which they expect their dogs to participate in. The dog that we look after would be scared to the extreme to be around gunfire and, in watching him with other animals, he seems to be much more interested in playing with them than he is in doing them harm. I conclude in my usual way by thinking that it seems to be the humans who are cruel and not the dogs.
Best wishes
Bill
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I know of one Labrador that is a complete business when hunting and a complete couch potato/goofball when not hunting. His name... Cooper 
By far the best dog I've ever owned. He will hardly retrieve anything at home unless he gets a brain fart. In the field, it's like a light switch and there's no stop. He knows hand signals, left/right, etc. I can send him on a retrieve, and if he can't see the bird right away, I get his attention and move my hand which way I want him to go, and he follows it. He won't sit still anywhere but hunting, then it's right next to me and eyes to the sky. If I miss, I think he even calls me a dumbass in his own voice. Great dogs.
I totally agree with you, Bill. You need to look to the humans who trained the dog, not the poor dog. We may have trained Labs to have a retrieving instinct, but how they direct that instinct is up to us. I love to see the Labs who have been trained to be support dogs for disabled people, often blind people, but also kids with serious autism, wheelchair-bound folks, vets suffering from PTSD, the list is long. They are amazing animals and these are examples of their instincts being directed in a very positive way. It is also good for the dogs, healthy and stimulating work that they love, as they naturally want to please us.
Terry
Yes, Terry, those are very commendable things the Lab does willingly, but a naughty one whispered in my ear that he is happiest when fetching a bird from the water! For confirmation, read Alex's post above about his Lab called Cooper.