What we all breed for

The ideal retriever

”must have a really highly developed sense of smell to enable him to gallop on the line of a runner when scent is good, and to hunt it out inch by inch when scent is almost non-existent … He must have determination and perseverance to enable him to find game in spite of every difficulty; to face cover and water no matter how thick or cold … His mouth should be of velvet, incapable of mouthing a bird when retrieving to hand, and last, but not least, he must have brains, without which he is never likely to be first class.”

Vincent Routledge, 1929