Never had a lab. Instead, I grew up with Golden Redorkers. I've always felt that dogs are pretty much worthless unless they are doing what they were bred to do.

Our last Redorker loved to work the asparagus fields, tail a wagging like crazy when on a bird, and would be relentless in her pursuit until the bird flushed. The look on her face when you missed a bird was priceless. Once a bird was down, she would high tail right to the bird.....

...and here's where the Redorker lineage took hold. She would find the bird, sniff it a bit and either sit there and wait for someone to get that nasty dead thing away from here, or she'd lose interest in that dead thing and start finding the next living thing to flush.

Waterfowl hunting was great! She'd stay in the blind, wag her tail in earnest when the mallards came in close, and would bolt out in the water on command. As a damn near Olympic caliber swimmer, she'd race out and tangle up in, and drag with her at least 4 decoys and their strings/weights. Once at the fallen Mallard, she'd circle the bird making sure that it was dead, or it if wasn't dead yet, would contain the bird until the bird died of laughing. Once the bird was dead, she wanted nothing to do with it and would swim back to the blind, taking another 4-5 decoys with her and would get to the hunters, deposit her pile of decoys at her feet, shake off her fur and get everyone yet, and would turn around, sit down, and wait to do it all over again. In the meantime, whomever shot the duck(s) had the fine pleasure of getting to retrieve them any way they could.

I once hunted with one of my Dad's lawyer friends along the Walla Walla River on a icy cold January day. The guy as a bit of a scatter gun noob and pretty much at anything that was flushed or flew on that day. He managed to hit and dump a mallard right in the middle of the slow, meandering, cold as hell river (ice was in the river) river. Our Redorker was on that bird like lightening! SPLASH! In the freezing, ice filled river she went! What a good girl! She quickly found the dead duck, swam around it twice to determine it was dead, and swam back to me, shook off all the ice water off of her and on to me, sat down, looked up at me with those loveable Redorker eyes and silently said "DO THAT AGAIN! THAT WAS FUN!" As the dead mallard slowly floated away down river.

Oh hell no! No way was any self-respecting Weekend Warrior, West of the Mountains City Attorney let his one and only mallard (probably is first ever) get away. It was a nice sunny morning. Albeit about 15 degrees. He stripped down buck ass naked, got in the river, swam out and retrieved his own duck! Son, hold my shotgun and watch this!
a) I've never laughed so hard in my life.
b) I'm still slightly traumatized to this day.
c) I got good at *not* shooting birds over water unless there was
another dog there, or had a way to get them without getting
naked and wet.

As for a family dog, our Golden Redorker was top notch. This dog would play anything with us for hours on end. Her favorite past time was to roll a brick in to our pond, dive in to get it, stay submerged for minutes as she tried to get the brick, would pop to the surface (coughing and chocking) with the brick, haul it back up on the land, only to use her nose to roll the brick back down in to the pond. Rinse and repeat. She would follow us in to the bowels of Hell if we asked her too. She was ultimately killed by a car when my Mom took her for a walk. She lunged/went after another dog across the road and went and done got runned over.

As for her ability to defend her house.....

She was fiercely loyal and you'd best be on your toes if you came up and knocked on our door. First thing you'd hear is the barking. Barking that sounded like someone may be choking. Slightly muffled, but constant.

When the door opened, you'd get charged. Mostly you'd get charged and get a nose in your crotch and right in the balls. If the nose-to-balls maneuver didn't disable you, her Tail Wagging of Death normally finished things up. If all else failed, she'd just lean on you, in an attempt to knock you over and lick your face.

Else, you would be greeted at the door and get chatged with a Redorker that had no less than 3 tennis balls, 4 sets of underwear, and 8 socks in her mouth, all while viciously barking at you and wagging her tail at you in an attempt to break your legs.

Gotta love Golden Redorkers.

PS. Best Golden Lab I have never met was Bob's dog. Rainy. That was one loveable and kick ass lab.

His new one, Sunny, seems a bit flaky, OTOH, I only met her as a puppy and never did warm up to me.