ONE OF THE PERENNIAL questions of anyone who meets our dog Alistair is, what is he? He is certainly part- or mostly Labrador Retriever: he has a lab's face and demeanor, down to the innate love of tennis balls. But he's half the size of a normal lab, and has other behaviors and features that suggest some other breed, maybe a collie or another herding dog. Mostly, we just conclude, he's a lab mixed with something small.
The American Kennel Club's description of the lab stretches four pages and includes a litany of subjective descriptions and other criteria. Five attributes “disqualify” a dog from being a Labrador according to the AKC; Alistair fails at least two of those tests (he's not tall enough and his tuxedo-white coloring prevents him from being a black-black Labrador). In what sense, though, is he “disqualified”? What does this make him? Less of a Labrador? Less of a dog?
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