Carolina Silver Labradors
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History of Silver Labs
You may find yourself asking questions, such as, "What is so special about a 'Silver' Lab?", "Why have I never heard of them before now?", "Are they pure blood?", "Why does the Labrador Retriever Club of America not accept them?" I once asked myself these same questions, but with a little research, it was easy to know that these Labradors truly are something special.
In the 1980s, a breeder began producing the Silver Labrador on purpose. The genetic makeup of this coat color was very rare and no doubt nearly nonexistant, because breeders were quietly culling them out of their programs. With many years of work, the Silver Lab population began to grow. In 1987 the American Kennel Club recognized the color and added it to the coat color registry next to black, yellow, and chocolate. This, of course, caused an uproar among the traditional Labrador breeders, because they saw their market shares fall through the floor. With much opposition from these breeders and the Labrador Retriever Club of America (controlled by these breeders), the AKC removed the silver color from the registry and began registering the silvers as chocolates by stating that any shade from light to dark chocolate is acceptable. They never said that silvers are not pure blood, registerable Labradors, in fact, if you were to ask anyone from the AKC they would tell you that they most definitely are pure. The AKC accepts yellow ranging from fox-red to cream, including the rare champagne color, also unaccepted by the LRCA. Blacks can be any shade of black, including charcoal
The founder of Silver Labrador breeding was so eager to prove the purity of these Labradors, that he put $100,000 up for anyone who could prove unpurity or crossbreeding to produce this beautiful color. Not one person was willing to stand behind their "flat earth" accusations against the ancestry of the Silver Lab.
After much investigation and research, the AKC stated, "...there was no reason to doubt that the dogs were pure bred Labrador Retrievers."
