June 11, 2024 • 13 mins
Robb Lust, The Dog Professor, from The Edgefield Animal Care Center, has added another breed to his series, the Newfoundland. Robb digs in on the history of the breed and all the plus and minuses associated with welcoming one into your family.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hey, let's welcome the Dog Professor, Rob Lust from the Edgefield Animal Care
Center. It's another episode of theDog Professor podcast and Rob, today we're
going to talk about a dog thatyou know very well because you have one
in your household, the Newfoundland.Yeah. ILL looked back at the past
episodes of the Breed series we had. You can look back and if you're
(00:21):
interested in the history of different breedsand things like that, in our earlier
episodes, we did that quite abit. Yeah, got to look at
it. I'm like, well,what the heck, I didn't even do
the Newfoundland and I have one ofthose. So Rosie would have been really
mad with me if I didn't figureout and talk about that breed a little
bit. Newfoundland's a very very interestingbreed. They're a very old breed and
(00:44):
obviously they originated, you know,in off the island of Newfoundland. Absolutely,
and what they were used for thatbreed. If you go back and
listen to some of the Breed series, most people know that most historically,
most big dogs come from certain mastifftype dogs, okay, and the Newfoundland's
no exception. But they developed certainthings throughout the breeding to deal with the
(01:10):
jobs that they were bred to doin Newfoundland and the coastline and everything there.
They were bred as a dog tohelp basically anyone who lives along the
coast. And they were a lighthousekeeper's dog, okay. Lighthouse keepers were
the coast guard back in those days, in the eighteen hundreds, and and
(01:30):
if there was a shipwreck off thecoast, obviously there's a problem with that
part of the coast if there's alighthouse there, right, because so there's
a lot of different shipwrecks there.So that's basically where the coast guard lived.
They were lighthouse keepers, and that'swhere the Newfoundlands lived. Why did
the Newfoundland Newfoundlands live there with them? Because they were built for water rescue.
(01:53):
They were built for fishing. Okay. They have a propensity to use
their mouth like a retriever, whichis something that not a lot of dogs
have that tendency for. And theywere bred to be pretty well weather resistant,
and because of their size, theyare able to haul in people as
(02:13):
well as anything else. Fishermen woulduse them when they'd fish with nets back
in those days. They'd have themattached to buoy so they know where the
nets are and then send the dogin, grab the buoy, bring the
buoy to the boat, and that'show they pulled their nets in and that
just kind of developed into Okay,well there's a person who needs rescue,
you swim out there and get them, and the dog's big enough to pull
(02:35):
that person or pull ropes to shoreand get that person out of the water.
So they were pretty much a stapleof every life lighthouse keeper in the
Newfoundland area. There are two kindof different lines of Newfoundlands. In the
beginning, there was the large line, which was still which was called a
(02:58):
Newfoundland still consider to be a littlesmaller than the Newfoundlands that you see today.
And then there was the Saint John'swater Dog, which was a smaller
version of the Newfoundland. The SaintJohn's water Dog is basically where most of
your modern day retrievers come from.It's that particular breed. The Newfoundland itself
(03:21):
was probably crossed with a mastiff asthey were starting to export them to England,
Ireland and those countries, and thatgave them the bigger size that they
have today. So that's kind ofwhere we have gotten with the Newfoundland.
The Newfoundland. If you have oneor have been around one. You know,
they're pretty weather resistant, which isreally a paint in the butt when
(03:44):
you're trying to house break them aspuppies because they're not in any real hurry
to get in out of the snowor the rain or anything like that.
They're not worried about it. Theydo have webbed feet, just like a
Labrador Retriever or Golden Retriever or anyof those other retrievers, and their coat
is pretty much waterproof. Okay,grooming wise, you're going to do a
(04:06):
lot of brushing with those dogs witha deep rake and uh, I mean
for as far as temperament and familypersonality type dog, they're one of the
greatest dogs you ever find. Theydo tend to put a lean on you
once in a while like a hug, and that's what Rose does quite a
bit. But you know, they'resuch a great dog and that There's a
(04:30):
lot of recorded history involving the Newfoundland. One of the most famous famous Newfoundlands
was c Man and he traveled withLewis and Clark on their expedition across the
country. There's a whole book youcan read about some of the avengers of
that, but he was his historicrecords say he was one of the most
(04:51):
respected dogs. The Indians had ahuge reverence and respect for this dog that
they came in contact when they camein contact with Lewis and Clark. He
chased off a buffalo one time,a rogue buffalo that it had come into
the camp. But the Indians reallyrespected this dog so much for the fact
(05:12):
that understand, dogs were a foodsource for Indians, right, okay,
and Indians were like, look,we don't mess around. We were efficient
people. Yeah, if you gota job or purpose, then that's what
you're here for. So this wasone of the few dogs that ever was
not captured or hunted by the Indiansfor food. So that was that was
(05:34):
a big story in the Lewis andClark thing. So that's how respected this
dog was. There's there's a recordin eighteen fifteen of a when Napoleon Bonaparte
was exiled to the island of Elba, Okay, and tried to escape the
island of Elba, somehow got knockedout of the boat, was rescued by
(05:57):
a Newfoundland got him back back toand now I think it was back to
Elba, but anyways, yeah,it was. It was what it was,
but there's a historical story of thattype of thing. So so Newfoundland's
were still still rescuing people, youknow, up into the nineteen nineteen hundreds
and things like that. So that'sit's really interesting to a dog to deal
(06:20):
with and there and there are somewater rescue competitions and things that they do
that with. Now I've seen videosof new fees jumping out of helicopters,
you know, and ocean rescue andstuff, and my new fee would not
do that. For sure. She'safraid of the wood floor. But you
know, it is what it is. And they're really they're really a great,
(06:42):
great big dog breed if that's whatpeople are looking for, that that
big dog. They do have aslight protective nature. They're more of an
alert dog rather than a I'm gonnago kill somebody type of dog. Right,
But they're very mind full of children. Okay, Like what if you
(07:02):
know a lot of people know mydog Rosy through Instagram or whatever because we
take her to brewery. Yeah,and and she has a totally different personality
in dealing with an adult or ababy baby. She's super gentle with she
puts her nose up there because thebabies are nine times out of ten normally
reaching out. She's not licking facesand stuff, but she lets the baby
(07:26):
come up there. With adults,she just like, okay, whatever whatever
you want to do. But they'reknown for that type of personality. As
as as the breed, there aredifferent color variations within the breed. The
normal is black. There is alsothe liver and the land here. Land
(07:47):
here is black and white, almostlike a Holstein cow. The liver,
you know, and people are alwaysasking me, well, is there a
difference in personalities with the color,Like Labrador retrievers are the big one with
that between chocolate black and laboratory andyellow. Well, it's the same way
with new fees. Black is themost steady of the personalities. Chocolate tends
(08:13):
to be the most unsteady of thepersonalities. Not saying that there's not good
ones and bad ones in all colors, but just in my experience over the
years, that's just what we've seenin cases like that. But it's a
great dog if you're looking for abig dog. But be ready to brush
and be ready to when we goplaces. We have a rosies bag which
includes a slobber towel and you know, water bowl and everything like that.
(08:39):
They do develop some ear issues earallergy issues because of the amount of hair
and the You know, if you'veheard of any of our past episodes when
we talk about ear infections or dirtyears leading to ear infections. The hotter
it is inside the ear moisture itstays inside the ear, the work more
(09:01):
of a possibility for an ear infectionor issues like that, and new Fees
are notorious for that. But otherthan that, man, they're just a
great, great dog have around,right, So if you're grooming on a
regular basis, they'll take care ofthe ears and things, but you obviously
need to inspect those. You needto be brushing on a constant basis.
(09:22):
It seems like, right, thebiggest thing with them is like an undercoat,
right, And it's not like alab undercoat where you find small hairs
everywhere. These are tend to bevery soft, downy, tumbleweeds. Okay.
In fact, we have what wecall rosy spiders on our laundry.
When our laundry comes out of thedryer, there's these little, tightly wound,
really fine fine balls of hair thatare stuck to our clothes that look
(09:46):
like spiders, But that's what makesthem pretty much weather proof and stuff like
that is that type of hair.But the big thing is under their ears.
You know, you'll tend to dealwith some matted hair, okay,
because of it is a fine hair, and when fine hair gets wet,
it tends to tends to get madat as they go along. But if
(10:07):
you pay attention to that and keepthat clean and everything else, then they're
pretty pretty low maintenance and a lotof that stuff. Do you need to
take it swimming? I mean,I mean, does it have a need
because of you know its history andwhere it came from, that it needs
to on some of these days likethis go out and enjoy the water.
They do have a natural propensity towant to be involved with water. Yeah,
(10:28):
okay, we can't spray the hosearound our house with her not wanting
to get in the hose. Somedogs are just not naturally instantly taken into
the swimming part of things, right, okay, because they're a little unsure
when they can't feel the ground anymore. But they do have a natural tendency
to migrate towards towards water. Itis the greatest exercise you can give big
(10:52):
dogs in that case because it's easieron their joints and hips, and obviously
as a big dog, that's aconcern. Earned hip dysplasia, joint dysplasia,
any of those things that involved thatare really really common in big dogs.
Those are always a concern. Soswimming, it's definitely one of those
things you want to get done.And with the webbed feet it makes it
(11:16):
pretty ideal. They're probably fast.Yeah. The problem is she lives with
a retriever. Yeah, so theretrieving aspect of things she's found out,
it really doesn't it's not a requirement, yeah, because Whiskey will go out
and get whatever we throw and thenshe'll just kind of meander into the into
the fun part that happens afterwards whenhe gets petted and everything right now,
and it's it's kind of funny towatch, but they're they're a really great
(11:41):
dog. That's fun stuff. TheBreed series was fantastic. You really dug
into just about every major breed andpopular breed out there and did the same
thing. So I invite you tocheck out the Breed series. That was
good. I mean there's probably whatten twelve of those out there? Oh
yeah, yeah, and it's it'sinteresting because you know, everybody sees the
breed and they think about different breedsthat they want to get for a pet,
(12:05):
but there's really a historical aspect tojust about every breed or a job
that every breed out there had todo and that's why they've gotten to the
point they are today. It's goodstuff, so go back and check those
out on the Dog Professor podcast.Hey tell everybody how they can reach out
to the Edgefield Animal Care Center.Well, the Edgefield Animal Care Center is
we're a full service pet care facilityin Central Ohio and Marion. We are
(12:26):
a veterinary hospital, boarding, grooming, training, all that. You got
your vacations planned for the summer,give us a call and if you're interested
in doing some boarding, you caneven do some training while you're on vacation
and have your dog a little differentbehaved when you come to pick them up
than when they left. But youcan get all that information on our website.
(12:48):
It's Edgefieldanimalcare dot com. Cool stuff. He is the Dog Professor Rob
Lust from the Edgefield Animal Care Center. If you're just finding this podcast,
we've got what one hundred and fortyof them out there ready, so check
it out wherever you find your podcast, and just look up the Dog Professor
podcast and you'll find
Hey, let's welcome the Dog Professor, Rob Lust from the Edgefield Animal Care
Center. It's another episode of theDog Professor podcast and Rob, today we're
going to talk about a dog thatyou know very well because you have one
in your household, the Newfoundland.Yeah. ILL looked back at the past
episodes of the Breed series we had. You can look back and if you're
(00:21):
interested in the history of different breedsand things like that, in our earlier
episodes, we did that quite abit. Yeah, got to look at
it. I'm like, well,what the heck, I didn't even do
the Newfoundland and I have one ofthose. So Rosie would have been really
mad with me if I didn't figureout and talk about that breed a little
bit. Newfoundland's a very very interestingbreed. They're a very old breed and
(00:44):
obviously they originated, you know,in off the island of Newfoundland. Absolutely,
and what they were used for thatbreed. If you go back and
listen to some of the Breed series, most people know that most historically,
most big dogs come from certain mastifftype dogs, okay, and the Newfoundland's
no exception. But they developed certainthings throughout the breeding to deal with the
(01:10):
jobs that they were bred to doin Newfoundland and the coastline and everything there.
They were bred as a dog tohelp basically anyone who lives along the
coast. And they were a lighthousekeeper's dog, okay. Lighthouse keepers were
the coast guard back in those days, in the eighteen hundreds, and and
(01:30):
if there was a shipwreck off thecoast, obviously there's a problem with that
part of the coast if there's alighthouse there, right, because so there's
a lot of different shipwrecks there.So that's basically where the coast guard lived.
They were lighthouse keepers, and that'swhere the Newfoundlands lived. Why did
the Newfoundland Newfoundlands live there with them? Because they were built for water rescue.
(01:53):
They were built for fishing. Okay. They have a propensity to use
their mouth like a retriever, whichis something that not a lot of dogs
have that tendency for. And theywere bred to be pretty well weather resistant,
and because of their size, theyare able to haul in people as
(02:13):
well as anything else. Fishermen woulduse them when they'd fish with nets back
in those days. They'd have themattached to buoy so they know where the
nets are and then send the dogin, grab the buoy, bring the
buoy to the boat, and that'show they pulled their nets in and that
just kind of developed into Okay,well there's a person who needs rescue,
you swim out there and get them, and the dog's big enough to pull
(02:35):
that person or pull ropes to shoreand get that person out of the water.
So they were pretty much a stapleof every life lighthouse keeper in the
Newfoundland area. There are two kindof different lines of Newfoundlands. In the
beginning, there was the large line, which was still which was called a
(02:58):
Newfoundland still consider to be a littlesmaller than the Newfoundlands that you see today.
And then there was the Saint John'swater Dog, which was a smaller
version of the Newfoundland. The SaintJohn's water Dog is basically where most of
your modern day retrievers come from.It's that particular breed. The Newfoundland itself
(03:21):
was probably crossed with a mastiff asthey were starting to export them to England,
Ireland and those countries, and thatgave them the bigger size that they
have today. So that's kind ofwhere we have gotten with the Newfoundland.
The Newfoundland. If you have oneor have been around one. You know,
they're pretty weather resistant, which isreally a paint in the butt when
(03:44):
you're trying to house break them aspuppies because they're not in any real hurry
to get in out of the snowor the rain or anything like that.
They're not worried about it. Theydo have webbed feet, just like a
Labrador Retriever or Golden Retriever or anyof those other retrievers, and their coat
is pretty much waterproof. Okay,grooming wise, you're going to do a
(04:06):
lot of brushing with those dogs witha deep rake and uh, I mean
for as far as temperament and familypersonality type dog, they're one of the
greatest dogs you ever find. Theydo tend to put a lean on you
once in a while like a hug, and that's what Rose does quite a
bit. But you know, they'resuch a great dog and that There's a
(04:30):
lot of recorded history involving the Newfoundland. One of the most famous famous Newfoundlands
was c Man and he traveled withLewis and Clark on their expedition across the
country. There's a whole book youcan read about some of the avengers of
that, but he was his historicrecords say he was one of the most
(04:51):
respected dogs. The Indians had ahuge reverence and respect for this dog that
they came in contact when they camein contact with Lewis and Clark. He
chased off a buffalo one time,a rogue buffalo that it had come into
the camp. But the Indians reallyrespected this dog so much for the fact
(05:12):
that understand, dogs were a foodsource for Indians, right, okay,
and Indians were like, look,we don't mess around. We were efficient
people. Yeah, if you gota job or purpose, then that's what
you're here for. So this wasone of the few dogs that ever was
not captured or hunted by the Indiansfor food. So that was that was
(05:34):
a big story in the Lewis andClark thing. So that's how respected this
dog was. There's there's a recordin eighteen fifteen of a when Napoleon Bonaparte
was exiled to the island of Elba, Okay, and tried to escape the
island of Elba, somehow got knockedout of the boat, was rescued by
(05:57):
a Newfoundland got him back back toand now I think it was back to
Elba, but anyways, yeah,it was. It was what it was,
but there's a historical story of thattype of thing. So so Newfoundland's
were still still rescuing people, youknow, up into the nineteen nineteen hundreds
and things like that. So that'sit's really interesting to a dog to deal
(06:20):
with and there and there are somewater rescue competitions and things that they do
that with. Now I've seen videosof new fees jumping out of helicopters,
you know, and ocean rescue andstuff, and my new fee would not
do that. For sure. She'safraid of the wood floor. But you
know, it is what it is. And they're really they're really a great,
(06:42):
great big dog breed if that's whatpeople are looking for, that that
big dog. They do have aslight protective nature. They're more of an
alert dog rather than a I'm gonnago kill somebody type of dog. Right,
But they're very mind full of children. Okay, Like what if you
(07:02):
know a lot of people know mydog Rosy through Instagram or whatever because we
take her to brewery. Yeah,and and she has a totally different personality
in dealing with an adult or ababy baby. She's super gentle with she
puts her nose up there because thebabies are nine times out of ten normally
reaching out. She's not licking facesand stuff, but she lets the baby
(07:26):
come up there. With adults,she just like, okay, whatever whatever
you want to do. But they'reknown for that type of personality. As
as as the breed, there aredifferent color variations within the breed. The
normal is black. There is alsothe liver and the land here. Land
(07:47):
here is black and white, almostlike a Holstein cow. The liver,
you know, and people are alwaysasking me, well, is there a
difference in personalities with the color,Like Labrador retrievers are the big one with
that between chocolate black and laboratory andyellow. Well, it's the same way
with new fees. Black is themost steady of the personalities. Chocolate tends
(08:13):
to be the most unsteady of thepersonalities. Not saying that there's not good
ones and bad ones in all colors, but just in my experience over the
years, that's just what we've seenin cases like that. But it's a
great dog if you're looking for abig dog. But be ready to brush
and be ready to when we goplaces. We have a rosies bag which
includes a slobber towel and you know, water bowl and everything like that.
(08:39):
They do develop some ear issues earallergy issues because of the amount of hair
and the You know, if you'veheard of any of our past episodes when
we talk about ear infections or dirtyears leading to ear infections. The hotter
it is inside the ear moisture itstays inside the ear, the work more
(09:01):
of a possibility for an ear infectionor issues like that, and new Fees
are notorious for that. But otherthan that, man, they're just a
great, great dog have around,right, So if you're grooming on a
regular basis, they'll take care ofthe ears and things, but you obviously
need to inspect those. You needto be brushing on a constant basis.
(09:22):
It seems like, right, thebiggest thing with them is like an undercoat,
right, And it's not like alab undercoat where you find small hairs
everywhere. These are tend to bevery soft, downy, tumbleweeds. Okay.
In fact, we have what wecall rosy spiders on our laundry.
When our laundry comes out of thedryer, there's these little, tightly wound,
really fine fine balls of hair thatare stuck to our clothes that look
(09:46):
like spiders, But that's what makesthem pretty much weather proof and stuff like
that is that type of hair.But the big thing is under their ears.
You know, you'll tend to dealwith some matted hair, okay,
because of it is a fine hair, and when fine hair gets wet,
it tends to tends to get madat as they go along. But if
(10:07):
you pay attention to that and keepthat clean and everything else, then they're
pretty pretty low maintenance and a lotof that stuff. Do you need to
take it swimming? I mean,I mean, does it have a need
because of you know its history andwhere it came from, that it needs
to on some of these days likethis go out and enjoy the water.
They do have a natural propensity towant to be involved with water. Yeah,
(10:28):
okay, we can't spray the hosearound our house with her not wanting
to get in the hose. Somedogs are just not naturally instantly taken into
the swimming part of things, right, okay, because they're a little unsure
when they can't feel the ground anymore. But they do have a natural tendency
to migrate towards towards water. Itis the greatest exercise you can give big
(10:52):
dogs in that case because it's easieron their joints and hips, and obviously
as a big dog, that's aconcern. Earned hip dysplasia, joint dysplasia,
any of those things that involved thatare really really common in big dogs.
Those are always a concern. Soswimming, it's definitely one of those
things you want to get done.And with the webbed feet it makes it
(11:16):
pretty ideal. They're probably fast.Yeah. The problem is she lives with
a retriever. Yeah, so theretrieving aspect of things she's found out,
it really doesn't it's not a requirement, yeah, because Whiskey will go out
and get whatever we throw and thenshe'll just kind of meander into the into
the fun part that happens afterwards whenhe gets petted and everything right now,
and it's it's kind of funny towatch, but they're they're a really great
(11:41):
dog. That's fun stuff. TheBreed series was fantastic. You really dug
into just about every major breed andpopular breed out there and did the same
thing. So I invite you tocheck out the Breed series. That was
good. I mean there's probably whatten twelve of those out there? Oh
yeah, yeah, and it's it'sinteresting because you know, everybody sees the
breed and they think about different breedsthat they want to get for a pet,
(12:05):
but there's really a historical aspect tojust about every breed or a job
that every breed out there had todo and that's why they've gotten to the
point they are today. It's goodstuff, so go back and check those
out on the Dog Professor podcast.Hey tell everybody how they can reach out
to the Edgefield Animal Care Center.Well, the Edgefield Animal Care Center is
we're a full service pet care facilityin Central Ohio and Marion. We are
(12:26):
a veterinary hospital, boarding, grooming, training, all that. You got
your vacations planned for the summer,give us a call and if you're interested
in doing some boarding, you caneven do some training while you're on vacation
and have your dog a little differentbehaved when you come to pick them up
than when they left. But youcan get all that information on our website.
(12:48):
It's Edgefieldanimalcare dot com. Cool stuff. He is the Dog Professor Rob
Lust from the Edgefield Animal Care Center. If you're just finding this podcast,
we've got what one hundred and fortyof them out there ready, so check
it out wherever you find your podcast, and just look up the Dog Professor
podcast and you'll find
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