We have blackberry bushes here probably the same stuff as rasberry. Seattle is very wet. The stuff grows so thick that only rabbits and rats are able to penetrate inplaces. I shot a pheasant last November and it dropped in that stuff. My dog couldn't get it. She was actuallystepping on the bushes climbing trying to reach it.

I've seen small springers slip in there when they can. The holes are usually the size of a football.

Now, Hawai'i had some Keawi trees (related to Mesque). Dogs can go in but I wouldn't try it. Thornstypically grow up to an inch long. There's been times when stepping on them, they drew blood thru the soles of my boots.

To quote every author that I ever read about training hunting dogs, labs only win because just about every single person that competes has a lab. They are not better then any other dog. It's a numbers game. I don't know why people don't understand this.

i feel there is no other dog that trains on commands and retrieves as good as LAB. none i know of,just my opinion..

now, put LAB on phesant,grouse,rabbit,there are MANY dogs for many reasons that can do it better than lab.

but for water/retrieving ,i rate the LAB as NO.1...

as for the ALL AROUND DOG,HUNTING/HOME , i feel they are best.

if LAB is not in shape,under 80 pds on male,they are not a dog to have for hunting here in mountains of pa.
heat/weight of lab is his biggest problem..

i seen labs that their tongues almost touched ground,they were out of shape,bigtime...

What authors, books, and page numbers? Me thinks folks would run poodles if they believed they could be NFC.

bkitchen0406 has a point. say you took the top ten dogs from the following breeds:

lab, golden, ches, spanish water dog, portuguese water dog, standard poodle, nova scotia, curly coat, flat coat, and why not through in about four of the versitile breeds and four different spaniel breeds. . . (forgive me if i've overlooked anyones personal favorite)

this would give you 170 dogs.

losthwy, you are making it sound like the labs would take the top ten spots.

In retriever fields trials they normally do.

that would be like me saying pointers normally win pointing trials. aren't they expected to?

let me try to restatethe numbers argument. if only one golden competes with 99 labs the odds are good that a lab will have the best performance that day. if one lab competes with 99 goldens the outcome could be different.