The Chocolate Lab Enigma

These days, it seems every other person we talk to wants a chocolate lab.

I'm not sure what movie made its way into every lab lover's radar, but as with all fads, it's a bit alarming to us how people would rather have a chocolate lab from dubious origins than a well-bred lab that is black or yellow 🤯

Is it a beautiful color? Absolutely! Which is why we have chocolate Labs and chocolate-carrying Labs in our breeding program. But, we are trying to be VERY careful with the chocolate or chocolate-carrying stud we choose for our females.

Why? We have found that many of the ones near us either have or have a family member that have/had a dilute gene, or even have silver Labs in their ancestry 😱

Another issue is that we are not having much luck finding chocolate studs near us that are balanced in their conformation. We are finding extremes of both "show" and "field" Labs and we have to turn away because we are really determined to continue raising balanced labs.

Above all, that is our intent: to raise Labs that adhere to the breed standard and that can also perform the work the breed was created for. Otherwise, what's the point?!

We do not breed for color. We breed for conformation, health and temperament.

The Labrador Retriever is already a perfect breed in our eyes, and having 3 different colors of the same breed, is just a fun extra 😎

Some breeders even refuse to breed chocolate Labs because they have been, in our opinion, falsely linked to health issues. What we have seen, however, is that the genetic pool is smaller for chocolate Labs and that may cause issues when, you guessed it, you just breed for color.

We have personally not witnessed that the chocolate Labs we have bred experience more health issues than our other colors. But we can see how that could happen if a breeder's chocolate gene pool is small.

Our advice? If you want to wait for a chocolate Lab, do so. But don't sacrifice having a well-bred lab for a color preference.

Either way, famous dog trainer Stonnie Dennis once said, "All dogs want to be Labs and all Labs want to be a black Lab", what do you think?