Shelter Lab for Hunting?

[TLRMADE]

So I'm ready to get my own dog. I'm really wanting a Black Lab. The more I think about it I really wanted to give one a second chance from the shelter. I came across one here locally. Her name is Taylor haha which is my name. She's 8 months old and around 34lbs. I'm wanting to use her for duck hunting and and riding in the car with me. She is extremely hyper around other dogs. A lady at the shelter said she had been there for a long time and came from a high kill shelter. I plan on sending her to a top notch training and obedience school.

Question I have is:

- Do you think she is hyper from being in a cage all day and she will grow out of it? I was told that she would keep growing until about 12mos, which I would like for her to get a little bigger. It seems she has grown into her feet.

- Can i make her as good of a hunting dog as a "full bred" registered lab? They say she's full bred but there's really no way to tell.

Edited February 7, 2012 by TLRMADE

[Smith]

Hyper usually mean they have a lot of energy and want to hunt. Learning to curb it will be what training does. It is easier to train a little spirit than try to instill it.

[E4 No More]

My male lab weighs more than my rotty at 110 pounds.

[jtmaze]

Yes there are some hunting characteristics bred into dogs but most are trained. My grandfather once made a squirrel dog outta a golden retriever.

JTM🔫

Sent from my iPhone

[Guest Lester Weevils]

As best I know labs tend to grow for about 2 years, but most of the second year is "filling out".

There is no sweeter dog and you will find no better car riding companion regardless of success or failure at hunting.

She needs frequent exposure to strangers and strange children early on, as in starting immediately. Keep an eye out at first in case she decides to snap at a kid. Dogs sometimes can respect adult humans but may not understand that strange children are of the same breed.

I didn't socialize my lab soon or often enough and she was a sweetheart with everybody she knew, but was borderline dangerous the first five minutes around anyone she had not met before. I think early socialization may have lessened that and made the ensuing years a lot less tense introducting her to strangers.

Labs are high energy dogs. They drop back from 10 to a more reasonable 8 or 9 after maybe 5 years.

They want to help. They will volunteer to help if they can figure out how. Our lab would follow wife around vacuum cleaning and would have cheerfully vacuumed the floor if she could have quite figured out how to do it.

Need to channel the energy. Met a nice ICU nurse when dad was in hospital last year. She had a 1 year old boy lab that was driving her nuts. If she left him inside to go to work he would eat all the furniture. If she left him outside in the fenced back yard he would howl all day and had dug up the yard to look like an artillery range. I told her he would grow out of it in another four years or so.

[hkgonra]

Dogs need exercise,discipline and affection in that order. Give them those three things and with the rare exception that you got a dumb one they will do anything you want.

[gregintenn]

That's a lab. She'll likely double her current size. Unless she's abnormally stupid, with a bit of attention, she'll figure out what you want her to do in short order. She'll make you a best friend for life. Ihaven't really trained my lab at all. He just seems to know what to do. When squirrel hunting, he'll lie motionless, and at the shot, he'll retrive the squirrel. He even fetches unbroken clay pigeons when we shoot.

Edited February 12, 2012 by gregintenn

[peejman]

Dogs that have spent a lot of time in shelters can be a handful for a while. As others have mentioned... exercise, discipline, affection, socialization, routine, ... all very important. I've never trained a hunting dog, but have trained several shelter dogs. If she shows dominance issues, Cesar Milan's (dog wisperer) methods work wonders.

[Good_Steward]

"- Can i make her as good of a hunting dog as a "full bred" registered lab? They say she's full bred but there's really no way to tell."

To answer this question: Absolutely. Dogs are very intelligent animals (some more than others), and some of the best hunting dogs I have ever seen have been mixes. Just like a child, you have to give them direction, clear expectations, reward for good / wanted behavior and discipline for unwanted behavior, and your dog will be just fine.

Edited February 17, 2012 by Good_Steward

[gregintenn]

It'll pretty much depend on the personality of that particular dog.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

The dog in the OP's picture could easily be pure lab as best I know. It isn't uncommon for them to have a spot of white on the chest or a few white whiskers. She doesn't look radically different from "pure bred".

One sad thing about labs, hopefully it can be avoided by more careful breeding-- They can be likely to get hip displasia and need checking at early age, preferably before you take one home. Unless you want the dog so bad that you are willing to pay a lot of vet bills. And I think they tend to get more cancer later in life than some other breeds. But they sure are intelligent sweet animals.

Dunno-- Maybe the genetic heritage is similar, or maybe the dogs often get inter-bred-- A Flat Coated Retriever is supposed to be a good hunting dog as well, and I dunno nothin about dogs but they look to me like labs who need a haircut. Maybe some shelter labs that look a little shaggy, maybe they either have some flat coated retriever in the blood line, or maybe they are actually fairly pure flat coated retrievers mis-identified as labs?

http://en.wikipedia....oated_Retriever

The "standard" size for labs in dog show definitions seem a little smaller than typical labs I've seen in the south. The standard definition is not for a big dog. And it is said the bigger labs are more likely to get joint problems.

The "english" labs, and the ones who typically win at dog shows, often have a fat head, stubby snout, and in males rather muscular shoulders. Which may be the "proper definition", but I personally think they are prettier dogs with longer snouts and more balanced physique. Not "almost bulldog" in the shoulders.

Shelters try to "guestimate" some kind of breed-mix to put on their advertisements. The "oddest" supposed lab mixes I see in shelter ads are the ones that have pointy ears rather than big old floppy ears.

I don't know squat about it. Just spouting off.

Edited February 17, 2012 by Lester Weevils

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Ok, on genetic heritage--

http://en.wikipedia....n%27s_Water_Dog

The St. John water dog was the ancestor of the modern retrievers, including the Flat Coated Retriever, the Chesapeake Bay Retriever, the Golden Retriever, and the Labrador Retriever. The St. John’s dog was also an ancestor to the large and gentle Newfoundland dog, likely through breeding with mastiffs brought to the island by the generations of Portuguese fishermen who had been fishing offshore since the 15th century.

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, St. John's dogs were exported from Newfoundland to England. These dogs were cross-bred with other breeds to create the retrievers.