[nagdu] Chocolate labs as guides?

[Brent Reynolds]

I don't think there really are any issues with chocolate Labs when it comes
to what does or does not make for good guide dog work, vis-a-vis Labs of any
other color.

To say that it makes sense that chocolates may suffer from skin conditions
and allergy type things more than other Labs, and to confirm it based on a
sampling of two out of a population of three is quite a stretch.

The chocolate Labrador from The Seeing Eye that I had shed less and had
fewer skin problems and less dry skin problems, and less scratching than
most of my other Labs, all of whom were black.  My current dog is a Lab /
Golden crossbreed and the Lab component of that cross was most likely a very
dilute yellow, since this dog's coloration has been described as, light tan,
beige, creamy vanila, and even white.

While it may be possible that a goodly number of chocolate Labs may carry
other genes that predispose them to certain skin conditions, it is still
true that the genes that influence color in Labradors have no effect on
anything other than coloration.  To extrapolate a supposition or
unscientifically derived comparison across unrelated species, such as
squirrels compared to dogs, is not, well, is not good science.

I would be more willing to speculate that you don't see very many
chocolate-colored Labs as guide dogs for the simple reason that the schools
just don't usually have very many of them in proportion to the other two
major colorations.

Color is one of the easiest traits to breed into or out of a line of dogs
when several different colors are possible.  Now, that might take a good bit
longer in a breed such as the Rottweiler which comes overwhelmingly in
black.

If you read the writings of Konrad Lorenz, who's work was considerably more
popular in the 1950's and 1960's than it is today, you can read that in
Germany, white was considered enough of a serious defect in the German
Shepherd Dog breed that white pups were routinely eliminated from the
populations, usually by unceremoniously drowning the newborn  white pups.
Yet, in the good old USA, fanciers of White German Shepherds have been
lobbying for years to get kennel clubs to recognize them as a separate breed
to be known as the American White Shepherd.

Among the old-time duck hunters fifty or more years ago, it was a commonly
held conventional wisdom that among Labradors, blacks were the best,
smartest, and easiest to train.  Yellows were said to be somewhat stupid,
and chocolates, which they called "livers", were said to be somewhat
stubborn and harder to train.  Nobody ever produced any measurable or
otherwise verifyable proof for those gems of conventional wisdom.



Brent Reynolds, Atlanta, GA  USA
Email: burddawg at bellsouth.net  Phone: 1-404-814-0768