Source, and click the other parts to watch the whole thing.
My dog loves it. I got her at 12 weeks, so he got heavily socialized to other retrievers. She loves all other dogs– almost too much– but if she sees another retriever of any breed, it’s like she’s in heaven. She doesn’t get to hang out with other retrievers very much.
I read the book when I was a boy, and I liked the book better than the film, even though the film follows the book rather closely, even down to the dialogue.
The actual dog in the novel wasn’t a Labrador cross. He was some sort of cur dog. I don’t know which strain he belonged to.
Curs are not mongrels. They are “unimproved” working dogs that were bred for to do lots of different tasks.
How this term got mixed up with true mixed breed dogs is probably a question of class. Working class people used curs to work for them. Wealthier people were busy “improving” and standardizing the strains of their dogs– retrievers, hounds, and other hunting dogs. Working people were more interested in producing dogs that could do the work. Because the dogs of the working people were not “improved,” they were thought of as mixed breeds. The term cur became synonymous with mixed breeds.
If you don’t know how this film ends, I won’t ruin it for you. I’ll just say it’s not a happy ending.
The reason why I say this is my dog’s favorite dog movie is that her favorite movie is Happy Feet, probably followed by Ice Age and Ice Age II.
