Hi, and a bit of advice

Hi all. I hope I can be accepted in on the forum chats etc, as I have a labby pointer cross, (not a pure labrador) which we got from a rescue center. To all intents and purpose, she does look far more lab than pointer, although in percentage terms, after a DNA, she is more pointer. She is called Sophie and is now about 18 months old. She was found on the streets of Ireland at 6 months, and we know nothing of her life before the pick up. She is a lovely pet, although has a few issues, which we are working on. I own and run a classic VW garage with two of my son's, with the garage workshop being an old farm building in a rural part of Essex. I shoot pigeons and corvids as a hobby to pest control for my landlord farmer and a few other farms near by, so Soph is hopefully going to assist with retrievals to save my legs. The problem I have is visitors and customers possibly undermining the training. Soph always initiates a game of ball or rope with everyone who arrives, therefore making her own decisions (not good I feel) and I'm continually having to ask people not to do certain things with her. I don't want to keep her locked away every time someone arrives and we obviously have work to do so cannot spend much time on her training whilst attempting to fix cars and earn money. I'm trying to teach Soph good things and she is very intelligent, too intelligent sometimes. She loves being with me, coming to work, where she gets walks in the fields and is learning all about pigeon pest control shooting. We're strict with her diet, she is healthy and friendly, though also protective of places and my vehicles. Anyway, I hope I can contribute to the chats as well as gleaning some usfuus tips to help me with Soph's training. I want her to have a happy, safe and fulfilled life, as well as fitting in with ours.

 

Hello and a warm welcome to the forum. Of course there’s no problem with Sophie not being a full Lab - in fact there are already a couple of “Labs with pointer pants” on the forum, as well as other mixes and some that aren’t Labs at all! Everyone is welcome

I wouldn’t worry too much about the things your customers are doing; dogs are very able to cope with different contexts, so to understand there’s one set of rules for “work” and another set for the rest of the time.
Labs and pointers are intelligent dogs, which is part of the reason they are used for the jobs they are. It is important that they are able to problem-solve and make decisions, rather than be micro-managed, so I wouldn’t be worried about setting her up so she can’t make decisions, quite the opposite, in fact. Of course, there are limits to this and you don’t want your dog to become “self employed” especially with strong hunting genes she probably has, so I’d be working really hard on connection with her so that she doesn’t free hunt without direction when on walks. I wouldn’t worry at all about her wanting to interact with people, and would actually see that as a positive.
If you don’t want her initiating toy play with your customers, I simply wouldn’t have her toys out. My lot all love balls, but they never have free access to them and they’re exclusively used as a training tool. A ball is one of the strongest reinforcers I have, so I keep it special to reward really good training efforts.

We’d love to see some pictures of Sophie. There is information in the Technical section on how to do this.

 

Hi Paul, and welcome to the Forum from me, in the Welsh borders. I have Cassie, who is my first Labrador but not my first dog. She was 2 in April, has been a handful at times, but I have got through it with help and advice from all the lovely people on here.
It's lovely to read about Sophie, it sounds like she has fallen on her feet with you and your sons, and that you give her a great life. Like snowbunny, I'm looking forward to the photo's! I agree that it's good for Sophie to be interacting with your customers. With positive reinforcement training, the dogs learn to make their own decisions, the ones that we want them to make, of their own accord, in time.

 

Oh, also, those DNA tests are a bit of fun but not the most scientific. My rescue dog came back as mostly Giant Schnauzer...



(Excuse the T-shirt, she was only a couple of days post op).

 

Hi there and welcome to the forum, from Poppy, Merlin and me in Germany. Sophie sounds like a love, and is I think the second pointer/lab cross we have on here!

Also - I second snowbunny's advice that dogs can differentiate... Lots of people don't like their gundogs playing tug games with toys, as they think it will give them a hard mouth. I have not found that to be true with my two, in fact I use a tug game as a reward after a nice delivery to hand.

 

Third, no? Charlie, Indie (The Pig) and now Sophie?

 

Oh that's right! Charlie AND The Pig!!!

 

Hi and welcome Paul and Sophie from me Helen, Hattie 10 years and my rescue boy Charlie a Lab x Pointer aged 7 years from Hampshire, UK. My boy was from Ireland too, at 6 months old he was given in to the Pound to be PTS He is far more Pointer in his behaviour, lucky me! super loving towards every human he meets. Sophie sounds gorgeous. You could train her to "go to bed" or a mat when you have customers, also agree keep the toys out of reach and she might not bug your customers. I love it when Charlie works things out for himself during training and he now makes some good decisions through positive training which is a joy to see and makes me feel proud. Good luck and yes photo's PLEASE x

 

Wow that's such a nice welcome, thanks everyone. I'll have to figure out how to post photos, I'm not that great with technology, but would love to show my mate to you all. I've had dogs before, but most have been whilst still at home with parents and none had any sort of training. My last dog, which we had when I was still married was an amazing dog, a Heinz 57, but so bright and intuitive, fitted in with everything we did as a family, so easily and perfectly. I was devastated when she passed away, and to not be there......well it was terrible. With Soph I saw a chance to give a much needed home and good life, to a lovely intelligent dog and I really wanted to do more to teach her and myself, the joys of the human/animal bond, the two way trust and love, and to have a mate and willing helper to go shooting with. I'm always busy with work, so excuse me if I'm sometimes slow with replies.

 

The best way for now to share pictures is by using a third-party host like Imgur or Flickr. Here are a couple of threads with step-by-step tutorials:

https://thelabradorforum.com/threads/posting-a-photo-from-imgur.12177/

https://thelabradorforum.com/threads/posting-a-photo-from-flickr-update.10872/

If you stick around and decide you like us, it is possible to become a "forum supporter" for £10 a year, which allows you to directly upload files of less than 1MB.

 

Welcome @Paul Miller! I’m the other owner of a ‘lab with Pointer pants’ - she is called the Pig (unfortunately her real sensible name Indie has fallen out of use!) and is an almost-three-year-old lab x English Pointer. She looks like a lab x GSP with a boxier muzzle and slightly snubbed nose. She is a delight but has a very strong hunting/prey drive which I struggle with. She is getting to be a fairly keen retriever though and we are playing at some gundog training which she likes.

I wouldn’t worry about your Sophie initiating ball games and tuggy rope with visitors, the ball at least shows she has a nice strong retriever instinct which sounds useful for your purposes, and I would much prefer her to be easy, playful and friendly with customers, rather than nervy or defensive which are the alternatives! And I think the old rule of working gundogs not being allowed to play tug has been pretty much discredited now. She sounds lovely, photos please!

 

Hi and welcome from me and 4 year old girl, Harley from Bristol.
It’s amazing how dogs learn to differentiate. Harley will pull my OH on walks, will often ignore his recall and loves to play rough with him. With me she walks lovely on lead, recalls brilliantly, is very gentle with me. When visitors come she is different with them all. My step dad she jumps up at and barks in excitement, my mum she is gentle and sits to get rubs - she is also like this with my disabled brother. My best friends gets full body wags and her OH gets lots of licks. I’ve never taught any of these, she has worked it out herself.

 

I will have a go at the photos, thanks for the links/help info.
Soph has a good few things she does different with different people. With just me in the car she sits looking around mainly and makes very little noise, but with my girlfriend in the car she squeaks and whines and yawns and makes a heck of a row which has lasted an hour and a half! She greets my two sons at our workshop, by being bouncy and tail wagging for one and more gentle and calm with the other, a bit like them, and she often barks at my girlfriends son! She'll play retrieving with a rope at home every night for ages and is excellent with a bird dummy in the field, bringing it to my hand and waiting for the signal to fetch. I'm teaching her to come to the open arms and combining a whistle, though she pretty much always returns to my sheepdog style whistle unless on a very hot sent. Heel work on a lead is not perfect, but we are persivereing with no lead and sausages in the drive and in a quiet field, which is going well and proving enticing.

 

Hi @Paul Miller, welcome to the forum from Maxx and I in Sydney, Australia. I've really enjoyed reading about Sophie and look forward to hearing more.

 

Being a bit dim with uploading photos. I now have Flickr on my phone, but that's as far as I've got, can't figure out what to do with it Will have to resort to asking my youngest son to show me. Pics of Soph are on my phone not on a pc or iPad.

 

I haven't tried on a phone, but I click on the picture then click on the 'share' button which is on the right and looks like an arrow pointing to the right. There are a few tabs, click on the one that is called 'BBC Code'. Copy the link and paste it here in a new post and voila! Instant pic

 

"BBCode" rather than BBC Code. It stands for "Bulletin Board Code"

 

Welcome to you from Mags, Tatze and Keir from Manchester UK

Tatze is my pet dog, a black Lab and she's five years old. Tatze means 'paw' in German.

Keir is my sixth Guide Dog puppy, a yellow Golden Retriever/Flatcoat cross and he's twelve months old.

 

Although, if you have an iPhone (and it may depend on the OS version) you can’t actually get the BBCode and it is a right pain. It either doesn’t give you that option or you can’t select all of it. So I had to change to Imgur.

 

My son Beau just got this first picture of Sophie, resting against the car door. She can be very chilled at times, often lies on her back totally zonked out