Well lets see we have black, yellow, and oh yes chocolate, but wait were talking retrievers I almost forgot there are Golden Retrievers, Chesapeake Retrievers, American Water Spaniels, Irish Water Spaniels, and someone even talked the AKC into allowing Standard Poodles into AKC hunt tests, yes that’s right poodles. Now the way I figure it there is a reason why the poodle used to be a hunting dog.

All kidding aside the type of retriever really is just a matter of personnel preference. We could say chessies are a little more stubborn, goldens are a little more soft, yellows are gay (that’s another story), or whatever, but we have all seen these traits in all of the above (except the gay thing). I have seen extremely hard charging goldens as well as stubborn labs, I have seen soft labs as well as extremely trainable chessies. As far as field trials go the majority of wins goes by far to the labs, specifically the black ones. Be advised that most of the dogs entered are also black labs. To this date only one chocolate has ever won the AKC National Championship Field Trial.

Not to go through all the trial statistics, there is good reason for this. The Labrador while being the most popular and run the most is geared totally to what judges want. Although hunt tests are producing more and more qualified goldens and Chesapeake's. The small amount of Water Spaniels I see running hunt tests are fine dogs but don’t seem to be able to do as consistent work as the other breeds. Percentage wise you maybe better off running a lab at a field trial then a golden, but in a hunting situation the majority of times it probably wouldn’t matter. So you might as well begin with something you like. One thing is for sure the training of these dogs is the same.

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