I started raising Labrador retrievers about 35 years ago because I just loved the dogs, and I loved to hunt with them.

Beau was my first Labrador, a big gangly yellow pup that wasn’t ever in much of a hurry. His strong point was his looks ... he was absolutely beautiful. Maybe he wasn’t the smartest pup in the world, but then, I wasn’t the smartest trainer either. Someone asked me about a little problem Beau had with staying until he was sent, but it didn’t seem like a big deal to me. If I dropped a duck in the decoys I wanted my dog to get it pronto! Beau thought that way too.

And Beau believed in me. When he heard me shoot, he figured something was falling. He went to get it. And really, I never expected to miss so why yell at Beau if he was out there looking for a dead duck before the smoke cleared, while the feathers were still drifting on the breeze.

It took awhile for him to get that way. He was only six months old when I took him on his first duck hunt, and it was a good day. Beau watched, completely confused about what was going on. I’d go out and retrieve the ducks, and take him with me, to teach him what his job was. Then we’d get back to the blind and I would throw the dead duck out a couple of times, 15 or 20 yards away and he’d charge out there and enthusiastically retrieve each one.

My hunting partner seemed impressed. “You know,” he said as we relaxed during the mid-day lull, “that dog is going to be a good one. If you go get the ducks you shoot the first time and bring them back, you’ll never have to go get ’em again!”

He was always something of a smart-alec, but I liked to hunt with the guy because he wasn’t a very good shot and I always got to shoot a duck or two to help fill out his limit.

Years later I owned a big chocolate Labrador I called Rambunctious. Ram was strong, and fast and eager. If you shot a duck, he might catch it in mid-air as it fell. He demolished a lot of well-built duck blinds just getting a jump on things.

I hunted with the publisher of “Gun Dog” magazine when Ram was young, and we set up once at the edge of Truman Lake in some natural grassy vegetation. Dave Meisner decided to teach my big strong Labrador to stay until the shooting was over, so he put him on a leash and, lacking a good sapling to tie him to, he tied the other end of the leash to his boot.

A flock of ducks came in and Dave got off one shot. Immediately afterwards he found himself being pulled by one leg out across a mud flat, headed for open water. Rambunctious was just living up to his name. Fortunately the lake water was deep enough to keep Rambunctious from getting strong footing, and Dave was heavy enough to serve as an anchor, with both elbows digging trenches in the muddy bank.

Dave Meisner was a great friend and his magazine became well known among upland bird and waterfowl hunters. I wrote a lot of hunting articles for him over the years, but he never did ask me to write anything about dog training!

So I guess I ought to own up to the fact that I am not a very good duck-dog trainer. It’s just that I have owned some very good dogs who taught themselves as they aged. It’s mainly attributable to all the duck hunting I did, since I have always been an outdoor writer and never had a job to hold down.

I learned long ago that if you call your Labrador the very best, you’ll be in a big argument with some hunting buddy who thinks his is the best. Everyone thinks their dog is the greatest. But if you claim to have the third or fourth best Lab in the world, no one argues. And third or fourth ain’t all that bad, so I that’s how I refer to mine, third or fourth best in all the world.

Sometimes, when someone comes to my place to buy a Labrador puppy, another direct descendant of old Rambunctious, they note how enthusiastically that puppy charges after a tennis ball at the age of seven weeks. I always say, with my chest thrown out ... “That’s just the way his great grandpa went after a duck!” Thankfully, no one ever expects that puppy to “sit” and “stay.”

Recently I have noticed people are starting to wise up to the “American Kennel Club,” the New York bunch that wants to register as many dogs as possible. They once registered my Labradors, but I switched several years ago to the United Kennel Club in Ann Arbor Mich., and I suggest, if you want to register hunting dogs, that you do the same.

In my opinion, AKC is not a very honest group, and if my opinion is worth anything, I truly believe they will register any kind of dog if you fill out papers right and will give them enough money, including dogs not pure-bred.

About ten years ago an AKC representative came to my kennels out here on Lightnin’ Ridge to “inspect” them. She found them unusually efficient, and finally had to “fine” me for the fact that I didn’t have identifying collars on the dogs. It was a little amusing. I only had about a dozen Labs at the time, kept in big roomy kennels, about 700 to 900 square feet, with big shady trees and 50 gallon tubs in the summer, big roomy insulated dog-houses, feeders, everything necessary to make them healthy and happy. I knew each one by their bark, but she wanted identifying collars on them, as if she thought I didn’t know which of my dogs was which.

For that horrible offense, AKC wanted me to pay them about $500, and she thought I was going to do it. So she sat in my office then and told me I should attend some of the AKC auctions she had to go to, where she transferred papers, so I could report on the awful things going on. She was very large, and very unhappy with about everything, including her employers. She really gave me some unbelievable stories about them. It was that lady who opened my eyes to the tremendous greed they had. It is far worse today.

She said that in Oklahoma and Kansas, she went to auctions where stolen dogs were being sold, and she was transferring phony papers on many of them for AKC. She told how it was all done, and of dogs dying on the auction block, and horribly sick and afflicted dogs there being registered to be nothing but puppy mill brood stock.

She denied it all, of course, when I forced AKC to give me a hearing, laughing as I did it. I made a 12-member AKC board travel and gather in a Springfield motel to listen to my grievances, not knowing I had already switched my registration to United Kennel Club. I suggest, if you register good quality hunting dogs, you do the same.

I only have five Labradors today, and the days of raising puppies is nearly behind me for good. Over the years we raised hundreds of healthy, guaranteed puppies which went all over the U.S. But never in my life did I ever sell a puppy to a commercial operation, nor to a pet shop or broker.

My dogs went to families, and hunters. Some became special assistance dogs, like those trained as seeing-eye dogs, others were trained as drug dogs. I love Lab puppies, and I love Labs.

Address correspondence to Larry Dablemont, Box 22, Bolivar, Mo., 65613. Send e-mail to lightninridge@windstream.net, check the Web site www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blog-spot.com, or call (417) 777-5227.