Pepper is now 5 months all and experienced a lot and she is a real cool puppy, and a delight but, there is one issue - and that's very strange we can leave her at home for 2 hours no problem she might crys or barks for 10 mins, we did as pippa's book described the training to leaver her alone and than she quietens down , as we see on the dog cam as well. But we are owners of a restaurant and when we take her, with us and we have our little office area next to the main area where she has a bed,toys, bones etc you name it and we leave her there alone she starts baring, howling, crying and wouldn't stop - its not a closed upp room she can even see us, but it's impossible specially when the restaurant gets busy, she only will stop once my wife or i come back . and the same thing if we take her ie. to a lawyers office soon she has no attention it starts. is it a teething problem or have we been to attached to her ? any suggestions would be appreciated as always.
I love the name Pepper! It's not a teething problem, but it has become a habit. Here is some great advice - http://www.thelabradorsite.com/when-labradors-start-barking-for-attention/ ...
It sounds like she's used to being the centre of attention when you're around, and so she can't settle when she knows you're there but ignoring her. The technique for training is exactly the same as for training complete separation. Start at home and pop her in a pen or behind a baby gate and get on with something else, for only a very short time at first, rewarding her when she's quiet. Build up the time that she can be in sight of you doing increasingly more exciting things (only increase time or excitement, not both at the same time). Then you can repeat it at work. A remote trainer might help you, too, if you need to train more quickly, due to work. Here's an article about them: http://www.thelabradorsite.com/electronic-treat-dispensers/ I have the PetSafe one, but the Trixie one is far cheaper, so worth considering. You'd just press the button each time she was quiet and settled, so she gets a nice treat. It saves you having to go back to the pen every few seconds
What a great article! Wish I'd seen it years ago!! Snowie has such a loud bark that, in public, I've had to address it otherwise it can be really annoying to everyone around. Yes, I know, I am rewarding the bad behaviour. The only way I found to keep him quiet while at a café was to "rain" treats down on him while he was lying quietly at my feet (or sneaking him whatever food I was eating if I didn't have doggy treats). Amazingly, he now is quiet without the treats for some time, but it cannot be guaranteed so one must always be armed with treats/titbits from the table. He just doesn't like doing nothing when out and about. For him, it has nothing to do with attachment or teething (too old for that); just that he doesn't want to be confined to doing nothing if there's something more interesting to be done. At home he is quite content to laze around, but not when out and about. He has improved dramatically now that he is older, so based on my sample of one, I predict there is hope for Pepper! In fact, just last week I was walking him and bumped into my cousin. We chatted for ages on the pavement and then I became aware that Snowie was simply lying at my feet watching the world go by. I was AMAZED! In times past he has barked deafeningly for attention when I've stopped to chat while we've been out for a walk. I read a great article (don't remember by who) about how puppies are always taken out to do something exciting -- to the beach, for a walk, to the park. The problem is that they're not trained to go out and do absolutely nothing. In this article, the trainer encouraged people to take their puppies out and just do nothing, sit on a park bench and watch the world go by. She said go with tons of treats at first, I think she even had a tube of liver paste that the puppy licked non-stop. The idea was to balance the number of times you go out to so something exciting with equal number of times to do nothing. We unfortunately missed this training when Snowie was a puppy cos we always took him out to burn off energy, ie to do something really exciting.
Loki is already trying to bark for attention or jumping up so having a read of this article to remind myself of what best to do.
