We have a very beautiful 12 week old black lab pup. We’ve been following the recall training which has been really successful So far. There is one negative side issue with this though and I wondered if anyone had any advice. Our pup is VERY food oriented. He doesn’t appear to distinguish between a basic reward and a premium reward and gets massively excited over both. So much so that when we reward him feeding by hand he has drawn blood on several occasions. Not through deliberate biting but by accident when trying to get the reward. Any suggestions on how to manage this would be gratefully received before we lose any digits!
Hi @Emsybam , first of all welcome to the Forum, from myself and Cassie, 2 year old black Lab. There is a way of teaching them to be calm around food, I learnt it from the Labrador Handbook. @snowbunny can probably help you.
Keir used to go crazy at meal times. So, whenever I was preparing food, if he was calm I continued - if he went loopy (barking, jumping, you name it!) I calmly stepped away and went back to preparing his food when he calmed again. It took aaaaaages to feed him at first but he got the message after a week or two. ‘No mugging’ your hands for treats is easy to teach and needs doing while they are young. Here is a good example -
I taught the no mugging thing with Ziggy from day 1 but he can still be a bit toothy (@ 14 weeks) when taking a piece of kibble. I find that stringy food like chicken breast or soft like cheese is effective in showing him what is food and what are fingers. Feed a small piece slowly and let him gently tease the last little bits from your fingers. The trainer at our puppy class has a technique where you present a piece of kibble in a closed fist then feed from a flat palm once he has backed off, that works well also.
My pup was like this at that age and he grew out of it. He is 4 months now and we have no problems anymore! I got some treats that were long and thin rather than round like kibble. I held the end between my fingers so there was more sticking out for him to grab. I'd offer it to him and when he went to snatch I said "no!" and took it away. Made him sit again and said, very softly and gently to mimic how I wanted him to behave, "easy". He'd snatch again and repeat. No matter what, I did not let go of that treat unless he had taken it gently. It only took a few tries- he would lean forward with his mouth and open slowly and take it only with his front teeth not touching me at all. Then repeat "Yes! EASY!" And we would practice this again and again. I gave treats not for doing things (ie no command to reward) just to practice "Easy". At first, like for a week or so he only did it when we were practining, but would snatch all of the other times. It just took a lot of keeping up with the practice. Any time I woukd go to give him something and he looked "snatchy" I revoked what I was going to give and said "easy." After 2-3 weeks he just knows to take everything softly and gently. Hope that helps!
I found that Homer got so over excited by the treat he forgot or didn’t pay any attention to what I was asking him to do. So I just used a portion of his normal kibble for treats, or small dry biscuit style treats. Only very occasionally once he’d got the idea did he get a more tasty treat of cheese or sausages or chicken.
