scene, the breed’s gundog expertise was its passport to the millions.
I left Poole and headed to meet Lord Malmesbury’s son on their old estate. The Malmesbury Estate itself was broken up and sold several decades ago, with the great house turned into apartments and flats. Driving through the gates and along the drive, however, you still get a sense of the estate it once was.
The River Stour meanders through the land, through fields that were once flooded from the heavy rain which had made the river burst its banks. The Stour had memories for me from my school days, just a short way upriver from where I was now.
My first port of call was the small keeper’s cottage. Over tea and scones, the keeper explained to me how important Labradors still are for the shoots. We piled into a battered pickup and drove through the old estate to the remains of the kennels. They had long since fallen into disrepair, with just a couple of walls remaining, largely overgrown. Looking at what remained of them, it seemed incredible that the dogs that had once been kept in these kennels were more than likely to have been the progeny for the millions and millions of Labradors across the world.
It was about the same time that the Earl of Malmesbury was beginning his breeding programme in his kennel on the south coast of England that the fifth Duke of Buccleuch (1806–1884) and his brother, Lord John Scott, imported dogs for use as gundogs on the Queensberry estates, in the Scottish borders, from a Newfoundland fishing fleet which sailed into the River Clyde. They had also realised what an extraordinary dog the Labrador was and so established a kennel in around 1835. One of the Duke’s dogs, Brandy, earned his name on his journey across the Atlantic. Having been sent overboard in a heavy sea to fetch the cap of one of the crew, the young dog spent two hours in the water before he could be picked up again, by which point he was so exhausted that the sailors had to revive him with brandy.
The brothers loved their dogs so much that when they went on a yachting holiday to Naples in 1839, they took their favourite Labradors – Moss and Drake – with them: something that was unheard of back then.
According to records, in 1871, the Earl of Malmesbury’s neighbour, Major Radclyffe – who had patrolled Poole Harbour with the Earl admiring the fishermen’s sea dogs – imported a dog direct from Newfoundland. He was called Turk and would go on to sire the line that included Ben of Hyde, the first yellow Lab to be registered.
By the early 1880s the original Buccleuch strain had died out, just five or six decades on from the original purchases from the fishermen on the Clyde. This could well have signalled the end of the Scottish lineage of the Labrador Retriever, were it not for our friend the sixth Earl of Malmesbury who ‘gave them a pair, descended from our own imported dogs’.
It is probably fair to say that a chance meeting between the third Earl of Malmesbury (at the age of 75) with the sixth Duke of Buccleuch (1831–1914) and the twelfth Duke of Home (1834–1918) saved the Labrador from extinction. The two Scots were visiting a sick aunt on the south coast of England and while there accepted an invitation to participate in a waterfowl shoot at Hurn. Precisely where I was heading now.
The Hurn Estate is another old estate that was broken up long ago, but what remains is managed by the current Earl’s son, James Fitzharris. In an old pickup truck we drove through what was left of the estate that had once been the family seat to James’s ancestors. Hurn Court is now apartments, and there was an air of sadness as we drove along the road that had once been the drive to the grand house.
It was hard to imagine what this place must have been like when it was still the thriving seat of the Malmesburys, in the family’s heyday, when aristocracy had money and power.
‘That’s all that remains of the kennels,’ pointed James from one of the misted windows of the pickup. There were some simple foundations and the skeletal remains of one of the walls. The remains had been largely consumed by the encroaching Dorset countryside.
It struck me that these sad, unloved, anonymous ruins were symbolic of our amnesia as to the provenance of the world’s most popular breed. James explained that he still kept Labradors, but that his father, the current Earl of Malmesbury, ‘couldn’t stand them’.
It was lucky that the current Earl wasn’t seated back in 1887 when the two Scottish visitors were impressed by Malmesbury’s eager-to-please, efficient water dogs and recognised they were the same Little Newfoundler dogs as their father’s. Malmesbury generously offered them some of his dogs to carry on the breeding programme north of the border, and the pair of dogs, Avon and Ned, that he entrusted them with are now considered to be the ancestors of all modern Labradors: the legendary progenitors.
And so it was that the Earls of Malmesbury and the Dukes of Buccleuch were instrumental in developing and establishing the modern Labrador breed.
In a letter written to the Duke, dated 1887, the Earl first used the name ‘Labrador’ in print. ‘We always call mine Labrador dogs and I have kept the breed as pure as I could from the first I had,’ he wrote. ‘The real breed may be known by their having a close coat which turns water off like oil, and, about all, a tail like an otter.’
Inca had the fattest tail you have ever seen; it was more like an otter’s tail – thick with coarse hair. It had never occurred to me that this was part of her heritage – the powerful motor and rudder to propel her through the water.
As I said, Inca loved water.
In 1999, I had been languishing in the offices of Tatler magazine in London and I was now looking for an escape. A way out. I wanted adventure. I was 24 and still living at home. I wanted an opportunity.
At that time the BBC were looking for people to be marooned on a deserted island in the Outer Hebrides for a year, beginning in January 2000. The project, Castaway, would later become one of the first reality shows to be broadcast in Britain. I applied and was chosen as one of 36 people to be shipwrecked on the Isle of Taransay for a year as part of a social experiment to see if we could create a fully self-sufficient community.
We reared our own livestock and grew our own crops. We built a slaughterhouse, a school and our living accommodation.
Each of us castaways had been asked to choose a luxury item that we could take with us. One couple had chosen a bed, another asked for a piano. Someone even opted for a home-brewing kit.
A dog. That was what I’d take. My own dog. A puppy.
Until that moment in my life I had led a relatively selfish existence. The previous 24 years had largely been about me. I had never had to think about anyone else but myself; the family pets were still the responsibility of my parents and I had never had to do an early morning walk with a hangover, or worry about a late night because the dogs were hungry.
This would be the moment that I made the sacrifice and took on a canine responsibility of my own.
But what breed?
I had grown up with Golden Retrievers; I liked Deer Hounds but they were too big; I liked Newfoundlands but they were too hairy; I liked Pugs but they had too many health problems. To be honest, I would have been happy with most breeds, but in reality there was only ever one breed of dog I ever really truly wanted: a Labrador.
Why a Labrador? Well, that is a complicated one,
