Labrador Retrievers are one of the most popular dog breeds, known for being friendly, loving, and easy to train. However, some people argue why labradors are the worst dogs due to certain behavioral and health issues. This article examines common criticisms of Labs to determine if the negatives outweigh the positives.
Why Labradors are the Worst Dogs? Their chewing habits, climate sensitivity, health issues, marking territory, biting, and selective obedience frustrate owners.
How Big Do Labrador Retrievers Get?
- Male Labs grow to a height of 22.5 to 24.5 inches and weigh 65 to 80 pounds on average.
- Female Labs stand 21.5 to 23.5 inches tall on average and weigh 55 to 70 pounds.
- How big does a chocolate Lab get? Chocolate Labs reach similar sizes as black and yellow Labradors. Color does not significantly affect their size.
- As medium-to-large dogs, Labradors do require adequate space and exercise. Their large size can contribute to incidents like knocking children over or eating messily, which annoy some owners.
What Is the Average Lifespan of a Labrador Retriever?
- The average life expectancy of a Labrador retriever is 10 to 12 years.
- Life expectancy for a yellow Lab is the same as other color variations.
- Factors like obesity, joint diseases, bloat, and ear infections can reduce a Lab’s lifespan if not properly managed.
Why Labradors are the Worst Dogs?
Why Labradors are the Worst Dogs? While Labrador enthusiasts cite the breed’s affectionate nature as a top reason for loving Labs, their energy and strength lead to annoyances for some owners:
Labrador Retrievers Are Always Hungry
Labrador Retrievers have voracious appetites and persistent food motivation due to their high-energy needs. Labs act as if every meal is their last, constantly begging for scraps and scavenging for any unattended food or trash.
This obsession with eating makes them prone to obesity and weight-related health issues like diabetes, joint problems, and reduced life expectancy. Without strictly controlled diets and plenty of exercise, Labradors easily become overweight. Their extreme food drive also makes training both essential and easy with food rewards.
However, frequent attempts to steal food off tables and counters frustrates many owners struggling to control their Lab’s insatiable hunger.
Labrador Retrievers Puppies Are Destructive Chewers
The puppy stage brings delightful playfulness for prospective Lab owners, but also relentless chewing behaviors that destroy valuables. As Lab puppies begin teething around 12-16 weeks old, they gnaw everything in sight to relieve sore gums – shoes, furniture, doors, sports equipment, and anything remotely chewable.
Attempts to provide plentiful chew toys are often ignored in favor of nibbling table legs or valuable personal items that end up wrecked. Patience during their destructive phase is required until they outgrow the teething stage’s irresistible urges to chew everything around age 8-12 months.
Preventing access to prized objects is also necessary for owners not wanting their possessions gnawed into oblivion.
Labradors Require Vigorous Exercise
Originally bred to energetically retrieve downed birds for hours on end, the Labrador Retriever retains an exceptionally high exercise requirement. Without adequate daily activity in the form of vigorous walks, jogs, swimming, or active play, Labs grow restless and neurotic while confined.
Pent-up energy often manifests as unwelcome behaviors like destructiveness, barking, hyperactivity, anxiety, aggression, or inappropriate urination.
Meeting a Lab’s intense exercise needs with commitment prevents these issues. However, many owners underestimate the breed’s demands, failing to properly exercise their dog. This causes disastrous outcomes for the unfortunate Labs and owners alike.
Those unable or unwilling to provide plenty of daily vigorous workouts should not take on this energetic breed prone to problematic behaviors without an activity outlet.
Labradors Tend to Jump On People
Labrador Retrievers express enthusiasm towards their beloved owners and visitors through jumping up in uncontrolled excitement. While Lab apologists consider this behavior a charming quirk, victims of muddy paw prints on clothes, scratched children, and elderly relatives knocked down see it as problematic.
With their large size and mighty ability to leap several feet vertically, Labrador Retrievers jumps become more precarious than smaller breeds.
Proper training to counter their innate desire to jump up in glee mitigates this issue. However, consistency matters since many Labs revert to excited leaping despite early obedience lessons covering unwanted jumping.
Families with small children, seniors, or visitors wearing nice attire face frequent unwanted surprises whenever guests arrive as their Lab celebrates in its own overly-demonstrative manner unless restrained. The true culprit though remains the owners unwilling to fully train away the jumping habit all too common among the exuberant Labrador temperament.
Labrador Retrievers Struggle in Hot Weather
The Labrador Retriever’s lush, weather-resistant coat and underlying insulation priming them for retrieving frigid waterfowl also causes them to swelter and suffer in hot weather. As temperature and humidity increase along with vigorous exercise, Labs easily succumb to overheating exhaustion and heat stroke without access to climate control and water breaks.
Signs like excessive panting, drooling, weakness, confusion and vomiting presage heat emergencies that prove fatal without swift cooling interventions.
Owners living in warm climates face extra challenges keeping their Labs sufficiently cool during walks and other outdoor activities through brutal summer conditions or even shoulder season warmth. Air conditioning offers essential relief for overheated Labs along with requiring them to lay low during the hottest daylight hours.
Those unwilling or unable to provide climate-controlled spaces for heat respite should avoid owning Labs in warmer regions – sticking with double-coated breeds in hot weather courts tragedy.
Some Lab Lines Have Health Issues
While overall a healthy, athletic breed when responsibly bred, some peculiar genetic conditions have proliferated within particular Labrador Retriever bloodlines, especially those focused solely on aesthetics over function.
Hip and elbow dysplasia plague certain lineages, causing early mobility impairment or debilitating arthritis. Eye diseases like progressive retinal atrophy or cataracts leading to vision loss affect particular lines.
Bloat, or gastric torsion, threatens Labs fed one large meal per day or given vigorous exercise too soon after eating. Prospective owners should carefully screen breeders about genetic testing performed on their breeding stock and specific conditions affecting their lineages.
Avoiding support for appearance-focused breeding over health produces generally robust companions less prone to costly veterinary issues. But identifying winning bloodlines still proves challenging amidst so much variation across Lab-generating kennels.
Labradors Shed Year-Round
Labrador fanatics certainly exist that don’t mind excessive shedding mess, but more fastidious owners get frustrated by copious fur dispersed constantly over floors, furniture, and clothing. The breed’s water-resistant coat certainly serves functional purposes for enduring icy water retrieving duties but less suits households desiring lower-maintenance animals shedding little inside.
While sessions with grooming tools like shedding blades and undercoat rakes help, Labs still endlessly drop clumps of hair year-round. You can constantly clean, lint roll, vacuum, brush, and wipe surfaces to meagerly combat the fur barrage, but short of shaving your Lab bald, sheer volume of loose coat overwhelms even the most diligent attempts at mitigation short of obsessiveness.
Those bothered by such hairy messes should avoid shedding-prone breeds like the Labrador in favor of far lower-maintenance short or non-shedding breeds.
Male Labradors Mark Territory
Intact adult male Labrador Retrievers frequently scent mark indoor and outdoor areas by urinating small amounts on vertical surfaces. Signifying a key method for establishing territory and broadcasting their presence, this habit of hiking a leg on walls, furniture, sign posts, bushes, and other vertical objects fouls areas their owners consider inappropriate.
Neutering males at an appropriate age reduces most urine marking behaviors but training also plays a key role since the behavior has become partially habituated. Consistent positive reinforcement of outdoor elimination while preventing access to vertical marking sites inside manages them effectively as well during their first couple years until physically and mentally mature.
However, the breed’s territorial leg-lifting practices poorly suit households wanting to avoid unpleasant smells and cleaning hassles.
Labrador Retrievers Puppies Nip a Lot
Needle-sharp milk teeth and excitable temperaments turn cuddly Labrador Retrievers puppies into biting machines attacking hands, arms, feet, and clothing. While simply exploring their environments, teething for sore gums, and initiating play, Lab puppy biting becomes a painful nuisance for owners under constant attack from overly-sharp baby fangs.
Redirecting biting urges onto provided chew toys only helps so much before those little teeth revert back to nibbling forbidden flesh again.
Most pups outgrow incessant shark attacks around six months old with diligent training and maturity. But the long puppy biting phase taxes owners struggling with discipline and patience. Those with low tolerance for puppy mouthing and nipping may wish to skip right through to adopting adult Labs who have outgrown chewing people.
People able to set boundaries without expecting immediate miracle behavior modifications find their efforts usually resolve biting issues.
Labrador Retrievers Can Be Stubborn
Eager praise and affection cement the Labrador’s reputation as an easily trained, highly obedient breed since they yearn to please their beloved owners. However, Labs notoriously turn selective deafness on inconvenient commands they prefer ignoring. Often independent thinkers rather than blindly obedient, Labs choose when to comply based on personal payoff estimations.
They primarily focus only on behaviors they associate with rewards and approval. Turning a deaf ear on distasteful mandates gets interpreted as stubbornness when really it just represents narrow motivations. Channeling their treat, toy, and praise-seeking drive into positive reinforcement effectively motivates them.
But forgoing inducements for all desired conduct makes for selective listening episodes where they seem stubbornly noncompliant with unrewarding orders. Patient owners embracing motivational training equip themselves to progress through the breed’s bouts of apparent stubborn willful disobedience.
Do Labrador Retrievers Attack Their Owners?
- While any breed can attack given the wrong circumstances, Labradors are not considered a dangerous breed. Their friendly, trainable temperament makes them quite safe for families.
- However, Labrador attacks do occasionally occur, often tracing back to lack of training, abuse by the owner, protective instinct over territory or family members, or health issues.
- An owner who treats a Labrador poorly or fails to provide proper training increases the small risk of biting or aggression. Overall, Labs are one of the least aggressive breeds.
What Are Some Downsides and Disadvantages of Labrador Ownership?
Beyond the reasons why some feel Labs are the worst dogs covered earlier, additional downsides of Labrador Retrievers include:
- Lab puppies are extremely energetic and require extensive exercise and training. Destructive behaviors manifest from pent-up energy and boredom.
- Labradors shed heavily during seasonal coat changes. Their shedding leaves fur everywhere without thorough brushing.
- Labrador’s thick coats and high energy make them unsuited for very hot climates. They easily overheat in hot weather. Access to climate control and water is essential.
- Labs eager to please nature makes them vulnerable to overeating and obesity. Their food motivation must be regulated through controlled portions and rewards during training.
- Labrador Retrievers can develop aggressive chewing habits that destroy household objects. Strong chewing urges starting during teething mean personal belongings get destroyed without redirecting their urges towards appropriate toys.
- Labradors require higher food costs due to their large size and metabolic needs, costing over $1000 per year to feed properly.
In summary, prospective Lab owners should carefully consider if they can meet this breed’s substantial daily exercise needs, afford training and healthcare costs, tolerate shedding, and manage behavioral quirks. While wonderful pets for active households, less prepared owners may become overwhelmed.
Smaller, less demanding breeds may suit their lifestyles better. Those committed to proper Labrador ownership will find their affection and versatility richly rewarding, however.