Hi everyone, we lost our 14 yr old black lab “jazz” in the summer and like so many never thought we’d get another. However in our madness we agreed to buy a brother and sister from a family friend Other than the natural instinct to mate which we plan to counter by having the male neutered, I’m more intrigued by how is the best way to train them? Is it best to train them separately or together? Any input would be appreciated Thanks
Separate socialisation, individual play sessions with you and most definitely separate training sessions, oh and separate walks when old enough to be out and about . Siblings will generally have a tendency to play together to the exclusion of their new humans after all canine companions are much more fun and happy to have a rough and tumble play session, so you will need to monitor and break up boisterous play and work at creating individual bonds with your new puppies. An easy way to remember is that you do everything that you would do for a solo puppy with lots of bonding, interaction and training - you just have to do all that twice I'm currently training some sisters who are now reaching 15 weeks old, not Labs, and their owners have wondered at times about their decision to have siblings as they hadn't appreciated how much extra work it would be for some months
Hi Dan (I assume ) and welcome to the forum. I have litter mates and I can attest to the fact that it's HARD WORK! Far, far harder than just one. You have to be aware of the risk of litter mate syndrome, so read up as much as you can about that; it's scary but forewarned is forearmed and all that jazz. My two had separate walks at least once a day until they were around a year old, and then still as often as possible. All training was done separately. You need to keep them from becoming dependent on one another and bonding closely to one another to the exclusion of you. It's easy to think "they'll be great company for one another", but if they bond too closely, you're making it harder for you to get through to them with training. Most recommendations state they should be crated separately overnight, preferably in separate rooms and spend more time with you than they do with each other. Then there's the real risk of them becoming very aggressive with one another during adolescence, to the point you may even need to re-home one of them because they are literally (not figuratively!) trying to kill one another. I was so afraid of this with my two; we thankfully came through unscathed, as many do, but again it's very important to be aware of the risks and make your plan in advance. Then there's the end of life considerations, as much as we don't like to think about that. The chances are they will die within a very short time of one another; are you and your family members mentally strong enough to cope with that? The training is fine (albeit exhausting and hugely time-consuming) when they're young pups but the real problems come through adolescence, which is so hard even with one powerful fully-grown but puppy-brained Labrador, let alone two. Adolescence can last many, many months. You need to make sure you have the basics extremely solid very early. I made plenty of mistakes with mine as they were the first dogs of my own, but I would recommend having a very thorough training plan in place to really crack things like loose-leash walking from the very beginning. Although I love my two siblings dearly, I certainly wouldn't contemplate having litter mates again. As for the desexing situation, I decided to have my bitch spayed before her first season. Again, this is a decision I wouldn't make again, as I believe it would have been better for her to have at least one season. I also believe in allowing males to reach full maturity before neutering because of the psychological and physiological symptoms that may manifest due to early neutering. In hindsight, I feel I should have found a solution (probably putting Shadow to live with friends) to allow Willow to go through a season before spaying. I'm not trying to change your mind, as my experience shows it can be done and I don't regret having my two beautiful siblings for a minute, but I know I could have done far better by them had I only had one.
