It's different experiences isn't it? My friend has a wonderful fox red lab, but the ones that attacked my mal were both chocolate, as was the one that bit my friends daughters face
Whereas my experience is that brown ones have been mainly bred for colour, regardless of health or temperament. We are on our 3rd brown Lab now, we rehomed her aged 5 months because the owner couldn't cope with her. There were contributory changed circumstances in the family too and owner was keeping the 11 month old yellow dog that she also had. But she was right, ours is very excitable and highly strung. Of the other 2, one was epileptic, although she lived to within a couple of months of her 15th birthday and the other was pts aged 18 months with lymphoma.
Yes he is a fox red.
I’ve said it before, but the worst most aggressive dog I ever met was a lab. I told the owner if it ever came near mine again, I’d report her to everyone I could, it was seriously horrible, massive show type. Saying that, the other aggressive dog at the time was a springer, both used to go straight for Jake, one of our first springers.
As @Pearlsasinger says, the chocolate became very popular because of the colour with little regard to temperament, there was a big deal made on petforums with a breeder aiming for chocolate puppies but she’d gone above and beyond with choosing parents for temperament and health tests. Caveat: I know colour shouldn’t be the issue but people definitely have preferences. My bil was looking for a b/w springer recently. Pointless directing him to a l/w litter.
When I first got Monster, my first dog as an adult, I really struggled to read him. Nearly five years down the line, I can read him a lot better (thankfully!). I find the sheer variety of dogs can make understanding them more difficult than say horses, that have pretty much the same morphology and heads from shetlands to shires. Dogs now can have such extreme morphology that they can be hard to read even by other dogs (Monster can't seem to wrap his head around french bulldogs for example). Dogs come with tails, without tails, curly tails, straight tails, pointy ears, folded ears, floppy ears, bug eyes, squished noses, wrinkles, extremely tight skin, lots of fur, very little fur, no fur, long dogs, short dogs... I think a lifetime of continuous observing is probably necessary (fro myself, I'm slowly working on it)
The 1st pair of litter sisters we had were Sandylands line, the best temperaments ever! We have never had one with a dodgy temperament but I do know of some that have.This is so very sad for the dog isnt it, above all else. Just goes to show though that any dog has the potential to cause harm. I grew up with labs and i always remember our first one, he was from the Sandylands line. He bit my mum, my brother and an uncle but never my dad or me. He had a very dubious temperament but in those days if you got bitten it was always your own fault and we would never have parted with him. I have known other labs who I wouldnt trust to have the amenable nature they are supposed to have and theyre not a breed I would favour as a pet. Each to their own and I hope above all else that someone does the right thing by him
My parents first Lab was a farm-bred fox-red dog. They chose him from 22 pups, 2 litter sisters each had a litter of 11 pups to the same sire. He was a fabulous family dog, endlessly patient with his children and protective without being aggressive.