A good pup costs less in the end, it’s advisable to buy the best possible breeding –health checks and all. They all cost the same to feed and keep at the end of the day.

A well bread lab will have been bread to please for generations, and will more or less train its self. It will have no fear of cover or new situations.

I quite like labradors but tend to avoid them on walks around here! We get A LOT of people who get them because they have a rep for being the perfect family pet. They expect them to just train themselves and naturally be perfect and don't realise that they are a working breed that needs lots of exercise. The result is a lot of fat, hyper labs who go totally nuts when they do actually get walked and have no training or self restraint....but that's fine because "he's friendly!". It's not the dogs fault, it tends to be lazy owners who get them because they think they will automatically be "easy". The lazy owner would never go to a proper breeder....so make that fat, hyper, poorly bred, under exercised labs and you can see why I tend to skirt around them. They are left to belt around at their own devices. Mostly the dogs mean well, they are just totally nuts, but I've met some fairly huffy ones too (I suspect lack of exercise means also lack of socialisation, these labs tend to put up hackles and be defensive). The Lab situation around here makes me sad

I would not get a lab as half the people who own them end up blind .

There are good and bad with all breeds and Labs are certainly no different. Given the sheer number of them registered each year (which doesn't account for the many thousands that are NOT registered), it isn't surprising we have dogs with less than desirable temperaments cropping up. But again, that is the same with all popular breeds.

True, its such a shame

Another point I should make is, are you actually sure that the dog is a purebred Lab? your average generic black crossbreed can look like your average pet bred Lab. I know, for example, a Cocker Spaniel crossed with a Rottweiler who in fact looks like a quite nicely bred purebred black Labrador. I would have had NO idea if the lady owner had not said, and I was quite floored actually. Then you have all the dogs that ARE Labrador crosses, but because the Lab 'look' tends to dominate (black being the dominant colour gene in most cases), they look purebred. This goes to show that looks can be very deceiving and what you are seeing isn't necessarily a true Labrador.

This one was apparently, but then again who knows out of the free ads, even if it had papers, who can gaurentee they were gunuine, I know what you mean though, I saw a what I thought was a labrador waiting outside a shop (off lead just laying there), talking to the owner she was infact half lab, half collie, very well trained, although they did seem to forget to train her with other dogs...

As for Marley from Marley and Me, Marley was NOT from a good breeder, but a backyard breeder. It has been a long time since I read the book, but from what I can remember, Marley had various phobias (noise related ones I think) and a couple of temperament issues that are NOT typical of a Lab temperament. This was due to both his poor breeding and the fact that his owners were total dog novices who didn't really know what they were doing. John Grogan, the owner of Marley, admitted this himself...they were inexperienced, didn't know what to expect, shouldn't have purchased the puppy from were they did, were flawed by normal puppy behaviour, etc.

So to cut the long story short, Marley is not an example of a typical Labrador but is an example of a non-typical Labrador with an inexperienced handler. You could put any breed of dog from a less than reputable breeder in the place of Marley, with an inexperienced and perhaps naive handler and have exactly the same story.