Labs as pets have taste for mayhem
Like movie’s Marley, real-life dogs are rowdy but loving.
By Sandra Eckstein
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
After running errands for 90 minutes Wednesday, Atlanta resident Courtney Dufries came home to bedlam.
Dishes, wine bottles, coffee and sugar littered his kitchen floor. The computer monitor was knocked over, and his desk accessories were scattered. Lamps were overturned. Papers were strewn everywhere.
“I thought I had been robbed,” Dufries said.
But there was no burglar, just Hobbs, his 1-year-old black Labrador retriever. The dog had figured out how to open the latch on his crate and, after the dog trashed the house, Dufries found him asleep on the bed with a chewed-open bottle of hair conditioner next to him.
Many who have lived with Labs can attest that the canine with top billing in the new hit movie, “Marley and Me,” isn’t an exaggeration, or even an aberration. Some, like Ellie Titus of Savannah, say they haven’t even bothered to see the movie “because I feel like I’m living it.”
Titus and her partner, Annie Quaile, adopted Miles, a 4-year-old yellow Lab, from Atlanta Lab Rescue about a year ago. Since then, Titus said, “he’s cost us enough to buy a good used car.”
That includes the $3,000 it cost to replace the upholstery in her Yukon XL after leaving Miles and her other Lab, Lulu, alone in the truck for a short while.
“It’s not that they’re really bad. It’s just that they have a lot of energy,” Titus said.
Some of that is because the dogs were originally bred for hunting.
Jenny Eppinga, owner of Ophir Labradors in Douglasville, a show breeder, said dogs bred for the show ring usually are calmer than dogs bred for the field. But only a small percentage of Labs are bred for the ring.
“I think there are characteristics of Marley that are true with all Labs,” Eppinga said. “But Marley really was on the end of the wild-child spectrum. He was obviously a field-bred dog.”
The breed also is known for its intelligence and its penchant to eat foreign objects. Hobbs ate two remote controls the first week Dufries had him. Miles gobbles pine straw. Gabriel, an 18-month-old yellow Labrador belonging to Ed and Teri Capparucci of Marietta, has eaten throw pillows, a cellphone, sunglasses and assorted other items since they got him as a puppy.
“We figured at one point he was destroying about $50 worth of stuff a month,” Ed Capparucci said. “People might think they’re exaggerating how bad they are, but they aren’t. You have to watch them constantly.”
So with this kind of reputation, why have Labs been the most popular breed in the country for the past 17 years, according to the American Kennel Club? Because, many owners say, they are the most loving and loyal dogs they’ve ever had. Ed Capparucci said his family has never once thought of giving up Gabriel, even when he scattered bags of clothing around the front yard or pulled down all their outdoor Christmas decorations.
“We’d never trade him for anything in the world,” Capparucci said. “He’s so affectionate and loving. You just learn to deal with the rest.”
