A Clever Retriever

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Mr W, Smith, the proprietor of the pleasure boats on the Don at Conisborough, has a remarkably intelligent Labrador retriever, which he has frequently found invaluable for the recovery of lost or hidden articles.

A few weeks ago Mr Smith crossed the river near his home, and was walking over the field to Cadeby, when he suddenly missed his keys, and realise that he had dropped them in the long grass. After a long fruitless search he hurried home and told his dog, Nell, of his misfortune. “Go fetch them,” he said to her, as she promptly scented out his track and trotted back to him with the keys dangling from her mouth.

Her power of retrieval are both natural and cultivated, for she has had a good deal of training. It is a favourite amusement of her owner to secrete articles and send the dog in search of them. “Just watch this,” said Mr Smith to our representative, with whom he was discussing the qualities of the dog; and he produced a box of matches and threw it across the river into a grass field. “Go fetch them,” he told Nell, and the dog at once plunged into the river and in the few seconds was returning with the matches in her mouth.

The curious thing about this feat was that, although the Matchbox had been well soused in the water the matches were quite dry, as Mr Smith was able to demonstrate. “I do not know why they should be,” he said, “but they are, every time.”

The dog is also very adapt at recovery of articles from the bottom of the river if she sees them thrown in, and she is first class at sport.