Sometimes! Susie is now 6 months old, will take food nicely leaving fingers on you hand, waits by her meal until told she can eat it, sits/lies on command (though sometimes not sure which is which), comes to command in the house and to whistle when in the garden undergrowth, empties herself to command (subject to normal physiological requirements of course), retrieves, etc. Haven't we done well? That was yesterday. Today the lot seems to have gone out of the window. She not only appears to have forgotten everything, unless there is a prominent treat available, she runs away when called, hides in inaccessible places when we try to catch her, and generally appears totally untrained. In those moments, as I once heard a primary school teacher say, we don't consider corporal punishment; capital punishment would seem more apt! She is bright and we sometimes wonder who is training who. She knows when she has grabbed something she shouldn't have because she quietly sneaks off with it to some dark corner. If she knows she can have it then she's out in the open. And then she comes up to us, chin on our knees and looks up at us with the typical doleful doggy eyes .... and our consideration of sending her back to the breeder also goes out of the window. We have had 5 previous Labradors and I don't recall having such problems before. Have we broken her? PS - Having been (rather annoyingly) accused of abuse by a member here after I admitted to having once smacked a previous dog on its rump with a newspaper I have liberally added smilies to indicate the humour behind this post!!
Hi @Sigurd One shouldn't expect a linear progression. Valleys come with the mountains. In your training rather than teaching your dog some exercise, the dog should not know whether you have a treat, nor whether she will get one. Keep your hands out of your pocket. If you have been using the marker word, it will buy you some time to get the randomly reward treat. Put the treats in your pocket. Or in a treat pouch with the pouch behind your back.
Of course not! It's really normal to have bumps along the road. This is an age when she's going to be getting more confident and interested in her surroundings, and might well need more motivation than she has done previously. I'd recommend going back to basics again, don't test her by giving the cues as you would have done, simply focus on the training part for a while and make sure that the rewards and sufficiently rewarding You can find lots of training help and tips on the main site here too. Let us know how you get along!
