[rintense]

Great post, thanks! I've only ever had black labs at various points in my life and they were just awesome. We have two chocs on our flyball team and we giggle at how 'lab' they are. They have that lab paw flip when they run. But they enjoy it and do very well.

Have never heard of a Dudley before. I've seen yellows with brown/pink noses but can't recall if I've seen a Dudley.

As for breed standards versus field, all I can say is I hate the AKC. That is all. :)

[AnAmericanMother]

A lot of yellows get what we call "winter nose" - when it's cold, or when they habitually eat out of plastic bowls or rub their noses against the corner of their crates, their noses can turn pink.

The reliable way to tell a true "Dudley" is to look at the eye rims. They are obviously pink, where a yellow even with winter nose will have black eyeliner.

I don't much care for the way AKC conformation Labs are going -- the hunting people call them "Pigadors". Many of them have lost the ability to hunt. That was brought home to me when I was the gunner for an AKC Working Certificate test at the National Specialty . . . lots of the conformation people brought their Labs out to see if they could get a WC on them (it looks good to puppy purchasers). I'd say about half of them had almost no drive to retrieve -- and they certainly didn't know what to do with a recently deceased mallard.