Hello, First of all I want to thank you all for your posts. I'm a new member at the forum, but I've been reading your posts for months now, and it has actually been a lot of help (so were Pippa's books, they are great!). I'm living with my 8 month old chocolate male lab Obi, in Belgium. He's a silly, boisterous dog, but has a good character. He's over friendly and very enthusiastic, as most labs are, I guess. He's my first dog. I have two issues that I hope you could give me some advice on… 1) I've been training him to recall since he was 9 weeks old. He established great basic recall. Since he's a teenager, though, I cannot rely on him to come back to me. So I try not to make the mistake of calling him when I know he's too distracted. And, he's always distracted, unless we're completely alone and the surroundings are very boring (haha!). Guess, we still have a lot of work to do on proofing this behaviour. He's a strong dog (show line) and weighs approximately 35 kg (and he's not too fat, it's all muscles and bones!). He has ran me over a couple of times. He just runs at full speed in my direction and doesn't brake! Because I'm afraid he will hurt other people this way, I do not dare to let him run off lead anymore. Now I'm using a long line (5 m) to give him a sense of freedom. The problem with that, is that I do not have any control of him. Attached to his body harness, he can simply create too much force. When I would use a line that's 10 m long, he would have a longer distance to gather up some speed, so that would be even more difficult. When he's walking heel on lead, I use a gentle leader. This is the only way I can control him (plus, I continue to use the positive reinforcement method). Is it better to not let him walk off lead until he's an adult and a bit less boisterous? 2) Since his big teeth came in, he started chewing and eating his vetbed. I removed it from his crate for his own safety. He has been sleeping on the plastic floor of his crate for two or three months now. I wanted to reintroduce the vetbed (felt sorry for him having to sleep on the floor…), but instead of lying on it, he still bites it and starts humping it (wearing himself out like a madman!). He has never tried to hump my leg, but in the past he also used his vetbed for this purpose, until I took it away. Was it too early to reintroduce the vetbed or can I train him not to chew on it one way or another? (I don't mind the humping if he leaves me alone or should I not let him do this?) He's embarrassed me with his humping though… Imagine me, sitting in a damp car on a parking lot, the car going up and down, up and down, … because of my dog having some fun in the back! Thanks in advance for any comments or advice. Have a nice Christmas!
