Hi Jabber,
There have only been a few dogs in my life, and all of them were wonderful. Lucky, the last dog, was a "pound dog," and mostly Black Lab.
She was hugely intelligent, loyal, empathetic, and devoted. She also had a gentleness to her, though she was fearless in protecting her people.
The empathy was displayed when her people were sad. She was very good at providing comfort and support, and eventually helping you come out of your sadness - quite often by finding ways to encourage you to play with her. This trait was very evident when my first husband died, and the kids were (naturally) sad and depressed.
She had a playful side, and loved to go for walks.
She was not too much into retrieving however. If you wanted to play catch with her for example, she would bring the ball or stick back a few times, but then would refuse to continue retrieving. She seemed to be saying, "I've returned that ball to you half a dozen times, and you keep throwing it away. Why do you think I should keep going after it?
Eventually she even won Steve over, and the two of them developed a very special understanding. I even left her in his care when the kids and I had to leave town for a family funeral. They managed swimmingly.
Those are the primary reasons I would vote for that breed.
My ex bought her as a birthday present for our son, and promised me that I would never have to care for her -- which was a good promise at the time, as Steve was not interested in having a large dog who would jump up on him and have the potential to knock him over - wearing leg braces, you can imagine that is a fear of his...
However, when my ex became ill with cancer, we began keeping the dog with us during times he was in the hospital, and we did our best to keep her in the kid's area of the house, and train her not to jump on Steve.
When my ex died, everyone told us to get rid of the dog. But I just couldn't do that - she was my son's dog, and he was so devastated over the loss of his father, I just couldn't take away his dog, too.
So Lucky became a part of the household. Steve trained her not to bark more than once when she wanted to come in from outside, and eventually she was allowed to roam the full house.
Once our son got older, the dog became very attached to me, and went everywhere with me. For reasons that are too involved to go into here, we got to a point where I even took her to work with me, and she would sleep in my office, greet all office guests, and ride in the car when I went on errands, like going for the mail or to the bank.
Sadly Lucky died about 7 years ago, and we have not been able to bring ourselves to get a new dog.
But I would vote for Labs, though Lucky was not a purebred, and was a bit smaller than a full-size Lab. She only weighed about 50 pounds.
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