Hi I have a 9 week old black lab who has been with us 2 weeks and is making great progress. Just 3 things I need help with - at the moment! 1. He stays in our kitchen at the moment, and cry’s and scratches the door when we go out the room. We do have a crate, but would like to stop him scratching thru training. 2. He is good with me, the husband, but bites my wife quite a lot. How should she control this? 3. We have a 13 year old retriever who is dismissive, but not nasty. How do we stop the pup jumping and playing at his face. The old boy won’t tell him off, and gets frustrated. Jeff
1. Use the crate ......make the crate a fun place....use a Kong ....stuffed with frozen treat. 2. Little sharky teeth.....yikes.....check out flirty poles on Amazon.....if intentionally biting...immediately....funis over...just walk away...... 3. Give the old boy an area of his own ..a place that little sharky cannot enter.......
He is only a 9 week old baby and has never been alone before coming to your house, always having his mum and littermates around. You need to go through the process of alone-training him, so he is happy being left alone. This begins with a crate and crate training, so he is happy to relax in the crate whilst you are elsewhere in the house and ultimately out of the house. There are many good online crate training guides now. Follow one. Always use a toy to interact with the the puppy, never just your bare hands - or he will just bite those. If he gets extremely bitey - crate, again - until he has calmed down, with a Kong to lick It's very hard on an older dog, to inflict a little puppy on an existing elderly dog and not prevent the puppy from harassing the dog. The older dog didn't ask to have to share his house with the puppy, it was inflicted on him - he had no choice. He deserves peace and quiet in old age to relax, not being constantly harassed by a puppy. The solution? A crate. Yes, the pup goes in a crate when they are just too much or too focussed on the older dog. THe other idea is to use stairgates, so the pup and older dog are separated most of the time. When pup and older dog are together, the pup should always be trailing a tag line so you can grab it and remove them if they start to get too much for the older dog - or even just hold the line or tie it to your belt - so they can't reach the older dog but can play at your feet. My pups are raised behind a stair gate in the kitchen, with their crate under the kitchen table. Every evening, they come out the kitchen to the lounge with a tag line on, and we watch TV together and they can interact and play with the older dogs as long as it's consensual. If the pup becomes too much, the pup goes back in their crate in the kitchen. The rest of the day (besides the evening) the pup is completely separated from the older dog, playing with her toys in the kitchen where I am working on a laptop when the pup is awake and out the crate. When the pup sleeps, she goes in the crate, and I go into the rest of the house to be with the older dogs. So I split my time between the two. The older dogs get exercised and trained in the morning whilst the pup learns to wait at home in the crate, and then the pup comes out on a socialisation trip with me in the afternoon - whilst the older dogs stay home. Integrating pup and older dogs is a gradual process which happens over weeks. Once the pup leaves the kitchen, it's to go into a bigger crate in the room where the older dogs hang out (the home office). The pup goes in the crate any time I am out or she is unsupervised. Don't let the pup harass the older dog - and do get onto the crate training, it will be worth every second spent on it
Hi! We are currently raising a 14 week old Lab puppy in a home with four other Labs. NONE of them are training the puppy in how to behave properly around them! In the past, I had two older ones who would simply give a low growl to the puppy who would back off and respect their space. The other dogs would then benefit from this somehow because I've never had to "teach/train" a puppy how to play with the other dogs without biting them to pieces. Since we've made little to no progress on this since he came home at eight weeks, I needed to up the game a bit. So, here is how we are dealing with transitioning Roamin into being able to be with the pack without harassing them to the point that they want to escape the room. One of our girls, Dreama, doesn't even want to be in the same room with him! First, we keep him separated from the pack as a whole (either crated or in a gated room with me or another human) except when there is something going on that keeps his attention away from the other dogs individually. Examples of his being allowed with the pack are when we are preparing their meals, getting out treats, or we are all outside playing with the hose or the baby pool they play in. These are all things that keep him from harassing the other dogs. He is let outside at other times with only one of the pack at a time and I carry his leash with me if things get out of hand. This obviously isn't enough or we would be having more "pack time" each day, Saturday we began this..... twice each day I take him to a safe room (with carpet and little furniture to get in the way). The first time is with our other puppy (16 month old Little Cain) and I have a large tug toy that he and Cain can play with. I keep his attention on the toy and not entirely focused on Cain. If he begins to "attack" which in his case is to latch on with his sharp puppy teeth and hang on, I tell him no bite and bring his attention back to the toy. We are now at about eight minutes (I think I lasted 3 minutes the first time) before I separate them again mainly because Cain is also a puppy and he still ratchets up as well. The second time is with our older girl (Kona aged 4). Kona simply stands near me while Roamin wanders the room; inevitably he will come to her to initiate play with a bite to her neck or leg. He is immediately reprimanded by me (since Kona won't do it on her own) and Kona moves out of his reach. She instinctively seems to understand that this is "training" because she stands still again and waits. If he approaches her properly, she responds in kind with a kiss or a head nudge. We are at about 3 minutes with this exercise after two days. I will consider this a success when Kona voluntarily lays down in the room with him. (I am not subjecting Dreama to this until he is successful in being in the room with Kona without "attacking" her.) Finally, each evening, I put him on a leash and let him in the Living Room with me and all the other dogs. This is our "quiet time" and each of the older ones understand this. I keep him at my feet so that he cannot harass the other dogs. If he is not behaving, then he goes in his crate in the same room during "quiet time". From there he observes the rest of the pack behaving properly and hopefully his desire to be with them will overwhelm his desire to always be harassing them. While most Labradors have a lot of patience with puppies, when they are not teaching the puppy boundaries, it is up to us to do so to keep everybody safe from harm.
