My Accident Prone Chocolate Lab

As someone who studies genetics, I can tell you that the different colors of Labrador retrievers (black, chocolate and yellow) are primarily caused by a handful of genes. Everyone jokes that chocolate labs are the "crazy" ones. As if one of those few genes which influence color also codes for "craziness" or "hyperactivity". I refused to believe that statement, opting for the idea that dogs themselves are not inherently bad, that there are only bad owners. Now that we have both a black and a chocolate lab, I am not as certain about my view.

Riker has been "Special" since the moment we brought him home. He's a happy boy, but sometimes he gets hyper-focused on a particular person or object. The result of this behaviour has been hilarity and injury (those two things normally go together, right?). We are at the point now where I want to keep a post on a whiteboard stating: "Number of days Riker has been injury free: _____". At the time of writing, the answer to this fill-in-the-blank statement is only one.

Riker is the kind of dog who gets so focused on getting in the car that he can't wait for the tailgate to open fully and smashes his head off it as he jumps in the back of the car. This pup has ulcerated his eye by running full speed into a stick, ripped a nail off at the base while chasing a tennis ball, hyper-extended his left forelimb, jumped out of a car window while driving, launched himself off a flight of 7 stairs without touching any on the way down .... and the list goes on. This week however, there was a new injury.

I am not exactly sure how he managed to knock out a premolar, but it happened. We went to the beach at lunch for our regular walk. As usual, I was throwing a stick so hyper Riker would burn off some energy in the water. This retriever is very "stick-focused". At one point, he returned with the stick and when he dropped it at my feet, I noticed that it was covered in blood. I took a look in his mouth and found a gaping hole where a tooth should have been. To make matters that much more exciting, I could see that some of the tooth was still there and had been broken off just below the gum line. Obviously, this required a visit to the veterinarian to have the remainder of the tooth extracted before it caused an infection.

And this guy just doesn't slow down. He never stops. Even after knocking his own tooth out, he kept pestering me to throw the stick again and again. There will be no more sticks for this dog! There is a new beach toy - a soft, floating toy to satisfy his retrieving instincts. I am left wondering, does one of these 3 genes that are responsible for color in the chocolate morph of the Labrador Retriever also contribute to the potential to be accident-prone?

The best comment I have received to date about Riker was the following: "I really hope he makes it to his next birthday" Just another day in the life of Riker the chocolate.