Last updated: October 2026 There’s a particular kind of morning that Lab owners will recognise: you call your dog, and instead of the usual scramble and slide across the kitchen floor, they take a moment. Get up carefully. Stretch longer than they used to. They’re still happy and still your dog, but something has shifted.
The morning I learned to stop trusting the thermometer was a sticky August day that only read 23°C (73°F). One of my girls had done the same riverside loop a hundred times, but twenty minutes in she started drifting behind me, tongue long and flat, looking for every patch of shade. Nothing dramatic happened. I
Labrador puppy teething starts at around three weeks old and is finished by roughly seven months, when all 42 adult teeth are in. The worst of it, for most Lab owners, lands between four and six months: the baby teeth are falling out, the big adult canines and molars are pushing through, and your puppy
If a Lab’s ear infections keep coming back — cleared by the vet, then back again within weeks or months — the treatment is working on the symptom, not the cause. Recurring infections almost always mean there’s an underlying driver that hasn’t been found yet, and chasing the infection itself round after round rarely fixes
Last updated: October 2026 The signs of a Labrador ear infection are repeated head shaking, scratching at the ear, a musty or yeasty smell, dark or waxy discharge, redness, and flinching when you touch the ear. If you see them, book your vet within a day or two, and don’t put home remedies in the
Last updated: October 2026 If you’re planning to breed your Labrador, health testing isn’t optional — it’s the most important thing you can do before any pairing is considered. Labradors have well-documented heritable conditions that conscientious breeders have been working to reduce for decades. Skipping the tests doesn’t make the risk go away; it just
Elbow dysplasia is less well-known than hip dysplasia but just as common in Labradors, and it’s a significant cause of forelimb lameness in the breed. Unlike hip problems, which often show up as rear end stiffness or a bunny-hopping gait, elbow dysplasia typically causes a dog to favour one or both front legs — and
Last updated: October 2026 Labrador retriever hip dysplasia is one of the two joint conditions I’d ask any breeder about (elbow dysplasia is the other), and it’s also one of the most misunderstood. Here’s the short version of how to tell if a Labrador has hip dysplasia: watch for a bunny-hopping run, stiffness after rest,
If your Labrador is licking their paws at night — often persistently, often the same paws, and often starting or worsening in the evening — it’s worth taking seriously. Occasional paw licking is normal grooming behaviour. Frequent, focused, nighttime paw licking is usually a sign that something is going on that needs identifying. The most
Your Labrador puppy’s first-year vaccination schedule is one of the less glamorous parts of new dog ownership, but getting it right matters more than most people realise. Vaccinations protect against diseases that are genuinely dangerous — some fatal — and the schedule is designed around how a puppy’s immune system actually develops, not arbitrary timelines.
