If you'd asked me two years ago where I would be now, I never would have said breeding labrador dogs! But when I moved out to the country it turned out to be the perfect line of work for me. I've now reached the one year mark and I couldn't be having more fun with these guys.
So there's been a lot happening around here and I wanted to give you guys recap of the last month at my kennel. I breed purebred labrador retrievers, and I have several adult labs, as well as several puppies who I will be breeding with when they are fully grown.
Then on top of that I have a female lab that has just given birth to a litter of puppies, so there’s been a lot going on around here and I wanted to put together a video to share some of the highlights with you.
Lucie, silver labrador
What are silver, charcoal and champagne labradors?
First off, for those of you who don’t know, I breed yellow, black and chocolate labs, as well as silver, charcoal and champagne coloured labs.
So there’s what’s called a dilute gene in labs which affects the colour of their fur. And actually many dogs carry this gene not just labs. And what this dilute gene does is when combined with a chocolate fur in labs it makes the coat silver, and in a gold lab it makes the coat a white or champagne colour, and in a black lab it makes the coat charcoal.
If there's a puppy heaven this is what it would look like.
You can actually see a hint of black in the charcoal lab’s fur, and hint of brown in the silver lab’s fur, etc. The dilute gene basically “dilutes” the colour of the coat, making it lighter and giving it a sort of silver tint.
Also this gene is recessive, so you have to have two labradors with this gene present in order for it to show up in their offspring.
Charlie, female charcoal labrador
Apple picking with my dogs
I’m going to be showing you some of my adult labs, who we went apple picking with on our farm. And you’ll see that some of them are silver and charcoal labs. We have a bunch of large apple trees on the farm, that have been here since the last owners lived here. And we hadn't really realize just how many apples they would produce. So we didn’t get it together in time by trimming the apple trees. (By trimming the trees, you get larger, sweeter apples, and because we didn't do this, the apples are smaller and more bitter.) So we had kind of a surplus of apples that were going to go to waste. But with our dogs we immediately found a use for them.
Rori, our male silver labrador, in the foreground attentively awaiting the apple we're about to throw.
As a side note, I realized as he got older, that we should have named Rori “Spike.” Haha! Any other Buffy fans see the resemblance above? I think it's the eyes.
Playing fetch for the first time with my puppies
So then I’m going to be showing you our puppies. We recently introduced our younger silver lab puppies, to our two older puppies, Finn and Dakota, who I’ve been vlogging about a lot. And we have them all living together in the kennel now, so I have some footage of their first few times playing together. We actually tried playing fetch with them for the first time, and they caught on pretty quickly.
Finn, our male champagne labrador, competing with the other puppies for a stick.
In the above photo you’ll see Finn, the biggest puppy, who is a champagne labrador, to give you an idea of what that colour of lab looks like.
So they’re all having a blast and getting along, and we’re absolutely loving the space we have out here on the property. It’s the perfect setting to raise our labs. They love running around and enjoying the outdoors out here.
Check out my vlog about it here:
What to expect
Coming up soon I’ll show you guys the one acre pond we had put in at the edge of our property, and we’ll take all the dogs down there for a swim. I’ll also be showing you our litter of puppies, as they start to walk, and open their eyes, and start to really look like puppies, haha.
Maddie, silver labrador
Hope you guys enjoyed my story. I am still learning so much, but I thought it might be interesting for you guys to come along for the ride and see what we’ve been up to.
Much love,
Natasha