So, we've hit another milestone!! So proud of our Ariel. She's been uncrated at night now for a couple of weeks, and absolutely no problems. Last evening, we went out for dinner, and left her uncrated and loose in the whole house for 2 hours. Came home, everything was perfect! I've been hesitant to leave her uncrated as she's not quite a year old, but she keeps surprising me with her maturity. She's such a great pup!!
Great! Glad you posted this. I was beginning to think we had the only labrador on the planet that does this sort of stuff after reading so many posts filled with problems.
There's plenty of good stuff going on the lives of Labradors and their owners that have posted problems on here!
Congratulations Jazzmynn on your pup's progress. De-crating is a great milestone. Just a word about problems One of the reasons that I set up this forum was so that people can post their problems. And get help and support with their dogs. Indeed, I also encourage anyone struggling with their dogs to come here, so a preponderance of problem posts is a natural and normal consequence of that. I think in general problem solving is one of the primary roles of many forums And it's an important role too. So I'd like to emphasize that everyone is welcome to post up any problems that they have with their dogs, whenever and however often they want to do so. I do agree though, that it's great to read about people's achievements too! So don't forget to come back and tell us when you've overcome a challenge, or made a breakthrough, however small. It's fun to celebrate successes!
Thanks everyone for your replies. I really enjoy being a member of this forum. I don't necessarily participate in conversations where people are asking for assistance, as I don't have the expertise that many of you folks have. But I do read the posts, almost everyone of them. And I have learned SO much from being a member of this wonderful group. I joined a stop smoking forum back in 2008 when I quit smoking (ya me!!), and it was basically the same format as this one. People would call out for help (me included), slip and start smoking again (not me!), but there were also many celebrations as people worked their way through their "quits". Quitting smoking is probably the most difficult thing I've ever done, so the celebrations were very important to me. I'm a very positive person. Ariel is not an angel 24/7, but I do try to see the positives in almost everything we do together. Sometimes, like this milestone, I just like to shout out about the success! Have a good day everyone!
Exactly. I received an email from Tom and Lauren’s training sight yesterday. It talked about the relationship between you and your dog being much like a bank account...the deposits are the positives of the day, and the negatives are the withdrawals. They included a form to list all your positive interactions, such as a good walk, nice cuddles, brushing...and the negative interactions being such things as frustration, disappointment, etc. My positives overfloweth!! Lol
Yup, it's a really useful way of thinking of your interactions with your dog. I like to use the same analogy for individual behaviours, too - every time you pay well for a behaviour (such as recall) in training set-ups, you are topping up that balance so when you need to make a big withdrawal (such as recalling away from a chase) you have plenty of credit in the account to do so, but that you then need to work on replenishing again.
