Dogs

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN England

MOST SUITED AS Field sports dogs and family pets.

SIZE
The shoulder-height is 78 - 6lcm (22 1/2 - 24in) for dogs and 55 - 58cm (21 1/2 - 22 1/2in) for bitches.

COAT
The smooth, medium-length hair of the Flat Coated Retriever can be black or liver. Occasionally a blonde example occurs but these are not recognized.

CARE REQUIRED
Groom them twice each week with a brush and comb, especially in those places where tangles occur. Check the ear passages at the same time to ensure they are clean and trim excess hair between the pads of the feet. If necessary the Flat Coated Retriever can be trimmed.

CHARACTER
Flat Coated Retrievers are intelligent, friendly, equable dogs that are happy to work for their handler, pliable, loyal, mad about swimming, with tremendous stamina, but they can have minds of their own. Most of them are not particularly vigilant and they rarely bark.

TRAINING
This breed is reasonably easy to train. They learn fairly quickly and are intelligent enough to quickly grasp your instructions. They can be stubborn. Attempt to avoid this by being very consistent in your handling of them.

SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR
Mixing with other dogs and animals never presents difficulties and they make reliable playmates for children provided they do not pester the dog. Strangers will be announced but that is all to be expected.

EXERCISE
This breed needs lots of exercise and they find it enormous fun to swim and retrieve. If you miss a day in exercising them, they will accept it without a fuss but if this is longer, then expect them to be very badly behaved. This is first and foremost a working dog.