THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 8, 1994 TAG: 9407080565
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
The American Kennel Club has decided that female Labrador retrievers must be at least 21 1/2 inches high and male Labs 22 1/2 inches to compete in its shows.
Darn! Just when I had decided to enter Boomer, a midsize chocolate Lab, at the next Westminster. He might squeeze by. I couldn't find the household ruler.
When he rears and puts his forepaws on your chest, you have to brace to keep from falling back, or when he leaps shoulder high at a ball held over your head, he seems to be a mighty long dog.
The difficulty would be to get him to stand still for judging. I had a plan, though, to coax him to pose.
When the Lab sights a rabbit, he comes to a point, as if cast in bronze. Suburban rabbits are not overly wary. Come upon one early or at dusk, and it hops 30 feet and stops while Boomer holds the point.
Those dumb bunnies think the Lab is just admiring them. What I'd do is catch one in a box trap, take it to the show, sit across from the judges, and just as Boomer's mistress led him forward for the judging, take the rabbit from the tow sack, hold it in the air and yell, ``HEY, BOOMER, HEADS UP!''
He'd freeze to attention, right front paw lifted. It's in his genes. But without the rabbit on which to focus, when the judge knelt to look in his eyes, he'd give her a big, sloppy kiss.
And if there is one thing that is considered remiss in dog shows, it is demonstrativeness. Which makes it hard on a Lab that is naturally given to showing affection.
The AKC officials hold that to qualify hereafter the Labs must be large and lean, not short and chunky.
There is a simple solution. Why not have two classes for Labs, large and small? No point in making distinctions. You see all sizes in all kinds of service.
They hunt, sniff for drugs, act as seeing-eye dogs, herd children, find lost objects, fetch slippers, read to the sick. There is no Lab that doesn't contrive his or her own way to become indispensable to human kind.
Listen, I knew two, father and son (Lawrence and Lucas), that frequented a boys camp in Goshen Pass. A child would fling a rock into the Maury River, and those big yellow Labs would dive six feet and bring up the very rock. They were vital during the first week to comfort any new, homesick boy.
A friend had a black Lab named Tyrone who was skilled in locating lacrosse balls gone astray in the brush.
On a Saturday morning there'd be a knock on the front door and a 12-year-old goalie, lacrosse stick in hand, would say, ``Kin Ty come out and play?''
News stories report that, at the moment, Labrador retrievers are America's most popular breed. Yet one has never appeared in the finals of the Westminster. Indeed, I have never seen any therein, at all.
Why, one day it wouldn't surprise me if the AKC issued a fiat that only Labs of a certain color, say, yellow, could enter its shows. by CNB