Hello all, is there a rough guide on what your Lab should be able to do, be trained for vs age?. Ours is 5 months old and she behaves well off lead with resonably good recall (not risked it round other dogs yet..). Lead wise she's a puller but that's just because she wants to be into everything!. Just wondering what I should expect at what age?. Maybe good lead walking at 1 year old?. I keep in mind that really she still is just a pup and she should enjoy growing up but on the flip side it's easy for them to fall into bad habbits..
Loose leash walking at one year is certainly a good goal to aim for. But as you can imagine, there really is no hard and fast rule on this because much of training is not age dependent, rather it is dependent on the number of training sessions you are able to fit into a given period of time, your own skill as a trainer, and your dog's capacity to learn. In the 'good' old days, much training was not carried out until puppies were six months old because methods were too stressful for little ones. That is not the case any more and we can start training much younger puppies, however, proofing - or teaching your puppy to respond appropriately to a known cue in a wide range of locations and in many different circumstances takes a lot of time. This is especially true of dogs that are very sociable and friendly because it is hard for them to learn to ignore other dogs. There's an article about six month old puppies on the main site and that might give you some idea of what some dogs have achieved at that age and what you might want to be aiming for in a month or so. But again, every dog is different and it's probably more helpful to focus on what skill you'd like to achieve next and then work hard on that for the next few weeks rather than worrying about what you should be doing Maybe some other members will say what their dogs were doing at six months old, and if they were happy with that or what they wished they had focused on instead!
Thanks Pippa. Although she has reasonable recall we let her off the lead today on the beach (with plenty of dogs on) and she's just too friendly at the moment so it all went out of the window. To be fair I was expecting it to and she is on holiday. Will be buying a whistle as you suggested in your book, she responds to "Honey, Come!" off lead walking but not so well on the beach.. Will work though all the training in "Total Recall" and see where we end up!.
I have had the same as you, although Jax is nearly 11 months now and its just started. He is almost perfect in most circumstances and the vast majority of his time out with me is off lead ......... unless there are other dogs, then he just doesn't listen. 9 times out of 10 I see them first so get him on lead and all is fine, but on odd occassion he spots them before me, its a nightmare. He obviously just wants to play, but other dogs don't know that and its not fair on them. Almost fully grown, boisterous lab bounding towards you can be quite scary. Having said that, when i recall, he now stops (which he didnt do before) and I am hoping this is a positive turning point. Fingers crossed.
Yep, when we are at home on walks I keep a beady eye out for other dogs before Honey spots them!. Hopefully as they get older they'll mellow a bit. Seen quite a few well behaved older Labs while on holiday so that's given me some hope!.
We are also 5 months old. Lead walking is all over the place. Sometimes he is great, other times he just sits and stares at you, and of course he pulls when there are distractions. Like you, I try to pre-empt the distractions. I usually try to get his attention and ask for a sit while the other person or dog walks by. It works a lot better with people, though he loves women and... men with vans for some odd reason! Off lead he is mostly very good. We take him to off lead parks regularly and he gets off lead walks when we are at work with a carer. He will recall away from other dogs the majority of the time (but not always- last weekend he chased another little dog beyond our comfort zone, and then had to be retrieved from a party that was happening at the bottom of the park. Luckily he didn't see the pizza!) and will sometimes even check in voluntarily. He wont recall from food, so we need to work on that!
There really is no guide - it depends upon how much training effort you put in, reinforcement history with your pup and level of training around distractions. In reality there is no reason why you can't have a good loose lead walk and/or recall at 5months. It's just training
