Silver "Labs" and AKC

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Originally Posted by gdluck

As far as the poorly intended accusation of them in=breeding, isn't that how all breeds are achieved?

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No, it is not. A breed comes from dogs that are genetically strong, and siring/producing their traits (note the plural, traits) when bred to outside stock. The resulting stock is often line-bred to affix traits, while consistently adding outside blood to maintain the overall health and integrity of the line and help eliminate undesirable traits as they crop up.

While it is true that line-breeding...and the occasional inbreeding...is often done, to consistently inbreed generation after generation to try and solidify a recessive trait....just that one color trait, to the exclusion of all other characteristics...results in all sorts of problems.

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Originally Posted by Jen Marenich

I am probably playing the devil's advocate here, but, weren't yellows, and then chocolates, originally frowned upon? I don't agree with the way silver tends to be a "fad" so far, but how do we really know? Didn't yellows and chocolates start out the same way initially?

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Chocolate and Yellow were always in the breed they showed up with high frequency and there genes were never subject to the chopping block, the red-yellow and chocolate are as old as the breed itself. Many Saint John dogs were a liver color. These solid colors were never considered disqualifying faults, unlike the Dudley, black-tan ticked, brindle, long-hair and silver. The Dilution gene was intentionally bred out along with the Agouti genes and several others. To be a lab-a breed genes were fixed at certain loci, the K, C, D etc. Still it's hard to get rid of recessive, so they can hang around, but if they were intentionally bred out, reintroducing them to express, is at odds with the breeds development and standard.

As for Double Coats, almost all field labs have them, a double coat means you can run your finger through the hair and not see skin. Now field labs don't have the long haired coat the Show labs seem to produce, but I went to a Specialty a few years ago they held a Conformation certification @ the hunt test, every field lab that was brought up scored enough points to pass the certification, some faults were found to be sure but no disqualifications and there was great appreciation of their movement.