He is indeed a black lab, and almost 100% purebreed at that. Thank you all so much for your compliments! Let me tell you a little bit about my dog, Ernie. We got Ernie in December of 1992 when he was about six weeks old. The woman who gave him to us didn't treat him very well, I'm afraid. Matter of fact, we wanted a girl and the woman was so eager to get rid of him that she told us he was a girl!! haha. So since Ernie was our first dog, we had no idea.... We were calling him Isadora for about a week! Anyway, we straightened that out eventually, and Ernie became our little angel dog. Now he runs the house. He goes out and gets the paper in the morning (and brings it back... and drops it!) and sleeps on the couch. He can sit, stay, lay down, shake, beg, speak, roll over, stand on only his hind legs (that one's called "big up"), and shake his whole body on command (that's a "big shake")!!!! That one's convenient for before he gets into the car after a swim at the beach. If you say "Ernie, did you see that dog?" He'll bark. If you say the word "bath" in any context, he'll go and hide. Haha. If someone comes over to the house, he runs and finds the first toy he can to show off to the guest. The other day he couldn't find a toy fast enough, so he grabbed my step dad's hat! He barks at the doorbell, and growls if he hears a strange noise (that's right, he's a guard dog too!)
As you can see, I'm VERY proud of Ernie. He sure is the perfect dog.