Hello everyone, I am having a bit of a problem with my 9 month old lab Gabby. For the past several weeks, she will attack my tennis shoes while we are walking and pull the laces, jump in my face and grab my arm. I have tried ignoring the behavior until she stops, but she just starts again after we start walking again. Today she actually broke the laces on my shoes and I could hardly walk home without her trying to break the laces on the other shoe. Currently I walk her about 75 minutes per day split up into multiple walks, play fetch with the ball (her favorite thing!) for about 30 minutes and do daily training. Any suggestions for this behavior? This is my first lab so not sure if this is normal teenage behavior. She is obviously playing when she does this but it is getting quite annoying Thanks!!
Re: Trouble on the walk You have a truculent teenager. I had this with Molly. She would suddenly "go nuts" and there was nothing I could do, and believe me I tried, but she was just beyond reaching. I could never identify a trigger. Then one glorious day it stopped. Rotten time for you, but it shouldn't last much longer.
Re: Trouble on the walk I met my friend with a Guide Dog pup yesterday - she gets exactly the same - very embarrassing as Guide Dog pups are walked in very public areas and expected to be angels in fur! I said I'm sure she'll grow out of it - but I feel for him (and you) it must be very difficult. :-\
Re: Trouble on the walk We had this phase with Mira and it was tough! What worked for us was to use a command which she was solid with, treat and give lots of praise. So if she was off lead I would tell her to 'heel round' in an exciting, upbeat voice and she would come round, sit by my side and look patiently up waiting for the treat. It didn't always work to start with, but it eventually seemed to defuse the situation long enough for her to forget what she had been in the middle of doing. We could then have a short ball game or hide-and-seek to divert her energy elsewhere. So, trying some sort of distraction is probably a good place to start. What you do depends on whether it's an on- or off-lead area and what she finds the most fun. There is info here which might help - http://www.thelabradorforum.com/index.php?topic=4316.0 Good luck!
