Breed Battle: Labrador Retrievers vs. Golden Retrievers

Depending on your hunting desires, life situation, and ability to train, breed choice can have a big impact. This goes for wildly different styles of dogs, as well as some breeds that are fairly closely aligned. In the latter category, you couldn’t match up two breeds better than goldens and Labs. Both are flushers, both are known for their personalities, and both are great options for house pets as well as hunting companions. But, which one is the better choice?

Let’s break it down and find out.

If you want to talk raw hunting ability between golden retrievers and Labs, you have to start with the availability of quality bloodlines. Run-of-the-mill dogs in both breeds are as common as misguided political opinions these days, but the best dogs come from the best pedigrees.

On that front, it’s not really even close. The Labrador retriever is the most popular sporting breed out there, and that means the options are aplenty. Goldens used to hold that title, but it’s been a few decades. That popularity they held, whether in pop culture or in hunting camps, led to the scarcity of good blood we see today.

The showy, yellow-haired goldens that look so good in photos are not so good in the field. The red-haired, shorter-coated dogs are a different story because they are generally field-bred. Most of the golden puppies you see for sale today belong to the show category, and they come with a host of health problems, and often, a general lack of high hunting drive.

Plenty of the Lab litters you see today don’t fare much better, but there are more options for quality breeding for them, now. The key with either breed is to suss out the bloodlines that will offer the lifelong health, athleticism, brains, and hunting drive that you desire. If you want to save some money, and have more options, the Labrador edges out the golden here by quite a bit. This holds true for the diehard upland hunter, the waterfowl junkie, or the folks who spend time in both camps.

As mentioned, golden retrievers are known for major health issues. Cancer is so common that overall in the breed, something like 60% of them will get hit at some point. Other genetic time bombs exist as well, and they will take a prime-age golden out fast. I learned this lesson three dogs ago after putting a golden down at six years old, and it was heartbreaking.

Less-deadly, but still quality-of-life-altering issues are common, too. Skin allergies, motion sickness, and other maladies are common in a wide swath of the available goldens.

This comes from poor breeding, which brings me back to their popularity in the 1970s through maybe the 1990s. High demand leads people to want to produce puppies, and when the general public gets in on the puppy business, the dogs lose.

Now, Labrador retrievers aren’t immune to health issues. They are known for hip and elbow dysplasia, and also EIC (Exercise Induced Collapse). You can certainly find a lab with skin allergies, or one that will hurl its breakfast the minute you start driving, but generally, it’s easier to find healthy labs than goldens.

Of course, that might not matter to you as much as plain old temperament, which is another category where these two breeds share similarities, but aren’t the same.

The golden is a goofball, and that’s something to love about him. Few dog breeds seek the attention of humans quite the way they do, and if you’ve ever owned one, you know that they seem to believe they are human. They are quirky, known to smile, and generally a pleasure to own and train.

Labs are different, but it’s hard to describe. They are lovable dolts in their own right, but also oftentimes mission focused in a way that goldens aren’t. While a good golden will retrieve until you’re sick of throwing a bumper, a good Lab will retrieve until it has a major chest grabber. And the second you revive it, it’ll retrieve some more.

Both breeds are absolutely lovable morons who will worm their way into your heart. They just take slightly different paths to get there.

If you had held this totally meaningless thought exercise 40 years ago, it would have been a no-brainer. The golden would win all day long. Today, the same holds true, but the Lab’s paw would be held in the air while he is crowned the champion.

There’s a reason you don’t see golden retrievers in a lot of duck boats, or trophy photos with limits of roosters, these days. They have fallen out of favor with the outdoor crowd. They aren’t gone completely, and you can definitely find some field-bred goldens that stack up just fine against high-octane Labs, but overall, the winner is clear.