Labrador: The Story of the World’s Favourite Dog. Ben Fogle

that phone call were some of the most painful of my life.

      The knowing. The feeling of betrayal.

      Inca, my beloved Inca.

      We took Maggi and Inca to the beach one final time. I carried Inca from the car to the shore so she could lie with her paws in the water. Here we were on a beach again, just as we had been on Taransay when her life was just beginning.

      I watched as her ears flapped in the wind and she lifted her nose to smell the sea air. Then, her belly covered in sand and seawater, I carried her back to the car and we began that torturous journey back to London. I couldn’t look anyone in the eye. In the rear-view mirror I could see Inca’s snout on Maggi’s back.

      Dad was waiting when we arrived home. I lay on the floor and sobbed uncontrollably into Inca’s fur.

      ‘One more night.’

      I carried her up to our bedroom, put her bed next to mine and lay there listening to her deep snoring. I didn’t sleep. I felt sick with panic and in the morning my pillow was stained with tears.

      At 6am I carried her downstairs and fed her, then picked her up and took her into the garden.

      ‘Give Inca a big hug,’ I said to Ludo, who threw his arms around her.

      ‘Where’s she going, Daddy?’

      ‘Up into the sky,’ I said, turning away to hide the tears falling down my cheeks.

      I carried Inca to the car, taking Maggi with us, too, and drove 10 minutes up the road to my parents’ house. I don’t remember much about that journey except that I cried uncontrollably all the way.

      ‘Thank you, Inca,’ I sobbed as we drove through the empty streets of Notting Hill. ‘Thank you for being my best friend. I owe everything to you.’

      I carried her from the car into the house, burying my face into her fur, and laid her on the kitchen floor. Mum, Dad and my sister were all there.

      Canine blood flows through the Fogle blood. Dogs are family.

      I lay on the floor, hugging Inca while Dad injected her. Her breathing became heavy. I could feel her heart pounding and the warm blood beneath her skin. I breathed the familiar scent of her fur as I nuzzled into her thick coat. I have never sobbed like that in my life. It was a primal, uncontrollable, guttural sob as I felt her heart stop beating.

      I lay there on the kitchen floor clutching my best friend, unable to move. Wishing, hoping it was a dream, I held her lifeless body.

      Maggi came and sniffed Inca. I wanted her to sense that her friend had gone.

      ‘Where’s Inca?’ asked Ludo, as I returned home with Maggi.

      ‘She’s gone up into the sky.’

      ‘Hello, Inca,’ he said, waving to the sky.

      I had lost my best friend. It felt like losing a limb. My shadow was gone. A flame had been extinguished.

      I had loved and been loved. Now I had lost and I was lost. I needed to find a way back. Thirteen years is a long time.

      It’s been quite a trip, Inca and me.

      

      The tiny boat yawed and bucked in the mighty ocean. Huge Atlantic rollers crashed against the vertiginous cliffs as seagulls wheeled above. A lone lighthouse stood sentry, ready to warn shipping of the hazardous coastline.

      My salt-encrusted hands gripped tightly to the oars as we, too, heaved into the surf. A rogue wave caught the front of the tiny boat, sending green water spilling in.

      We were a pinprick on a tiny ocean.

      I had come to Newfoundland and Labrador on the easternmost point of Canada – often described as Atlantic Canada. This is frontier country; a tough, rugged coastline where the people are as hardy as the geography. It holds a lot of similarities with its counterpart on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the Western Isles of Scotland. The flora and fauna reminded me of Scotland, only larger.

      I was with local rower – Pete – on one of the original fishing skiffs, a tiny two-man wooden boat that looked like it would be better suited to a pond than an angry ocean. These were the craft with which the fishermen had, in better times, caught the cod that were once so prolific in these waters.

      Like a detective following a trail, I had come here in search of the Labrador. It seemed wrong, coming to a place that was also named after a different breed altogether, but all the evidence seemed to conclude that Newfoundland did play a role in the evolution of the Labrador Retriever.

      Despite a lifetime of travels to Canada, this was my first visit to this part of the country. A Canadian father had ensured plenty of summers on the lakes of Ontario, where I spent my time canoeing, swimming and fishing. Of course, there was also a dog. A mutt called Bejo that had somehow been rescued from the streets of Marrakech, in Morocco, by a family friend and had been flown to the Canadian lakes.

      I had long wanted an excuse to visit this remote corner of one of the least-populated countries on Earth, and now here it was …

      My journey to Atlantic Canada began in the rather inauspicious surroundings of Dublin, in Ireland, from where I caught my transatlantic flight to St John’s, which must surely be the shortest hop across the Atlantic Ocean. We had barely taken off when we were landing again, just four hours later.

      St John’s is a rugged working port. I’m sure it had once been a very beautiful harbour, but the heavy industry and the presence of dozens of offshore supply ships servicing the oil industry give it a gritty industrial feel. The supply ships tower above the small buildings of the city.

      St John’s is considered by many to be the ‘big smoke’, but even with the majority of the region’s employment opportunities and, therefore, population, it has a small-town feel. Colourful, clapboard-style houses dot the streets as reminders of the city’s heritage. This is pioneering country.

      Labrador and Newfoundland are collectively one state. Bordering Quebec on the west and the rugged Atlantic to the east, it covers more than 29,000 kilometres of coastline. At nearly 150,000 square kilometres, it is the same size as Japan.

      I had come here, not for the landscape, nor the people, but in search of a dog famed for its fierce loyalty and ferocious love of food. A dog intricately tied to British culture. A dog beloved of families across the world and championed by countless prime ministers and presidents. A dog both used to sell loo roll and owned by royalty: the humble Labrador Retriever.

      The story of the Labrador is as intriguing as it is complex. It is estimated that there are between 300 and 400 different breeds of dog in the world – the exact numbers are disputed by various kennel clubs which have yet to recognise certain breeds that have been crossbred over time. Of course, all breeds began with some sort of crossbreeding, but how did the Labrador evolve?

      Breeds of dogs are variously broken down by the English Kennel Club into Hound, Terrier, Gundog, Utility, Pastoral, Toy and Working. While many will class breeds according to what they were bred to do, you can also categorise them according to geography: Welsh Corgi, Yorkshire Terrier, Afghan Hound, Bernese Mountain Dog, the Maltese, Rhodesian Ridgeback, English Setter, Hungarian Vizla, German Shepherd, Irish Setter, Spanish Water Dog, Manchester Terrier, Norfolk Terrier … The list of dogs with a geographical tie is long so I won’t bore you, but you get the gist.

      The heritage of the Labrador, however, is much more complex and confused. Indeed, dozens of books have been published over the years with conflicting stories about the history of the world’s most popular breed.

      While it is widely accepted that the Yorkshire Terrier, for example, was developed in the nineteenth century to catch rats in the clothing mills of the