Hello fellow Labrador owners! Our family lost our beloved chocolate lab Molly last May, a month before she would have turned 13. It was difficult on our family and we all went through periods of never wanting another dog again. My husband, in particular has had a hard time. He had never had a pet of any kind before and we had Molly for two years before welcoming our first child. She was our first “baby.” On August 31st we brought home an eight week old chocolate lab who we named Chester. He’s now a 50lb 6 1/2 month old and we are amazed at how different two dogs can be! A few of the things we got wrong the first time around with Molly were her recall and retrieve, we always had to have a second ball on hand to get her to drop the first, and that didn’t always work! Chester’s recall is amazing so far and we have taught him an emergency recall as well as regular recall. He is also learning to bring a ball to us after retrieving it and is getting better at releasing it. A few issues we are finding challenging with Chester are some separation anxiety (and hyper attachment to me in particular), counter surfing and some resource guarding. He spends his days during the work week at puppy daycare which we started in late November and he’s been a much calmer and happier dog in the evenings. He now sleeps with us as he will generally stay in bed until we get up as opposed to whining at 4 am in his crate. I have to admit we have cut our losses on that account. We do try to put him in his crate for short amounts of time when we are home and don’t let him out until he lays down and is quiet. His whining is very hard to take and I’m not sure how we are going to stop it. He whines in the car, if I’m out of his sight, or if he goes in his crate. He has also started barking quite a bit, sometimes because the dogs next door are barking, sometimes because there’s someone at the door, and most times we really aren’t sure what he’s barking at! The counter surfing is something we experienced with Molly, however she only grabbed things she could reach with her mouth. Chester is quite the problem solver and uses his front legs like arms to reach and pull things from the back. We are trying to do a better job of keeping the counters cleared, however this past Wednesday our kids were home alone with him due to no busses running from the cold temperatures and he tried to use his hind legs to boost himself up with the cupboard door handles. The same day he also opened the oven door with the hand towel, then again with his paws on the handle after the hand towel was removed. He also managed to climb up onto our pub height table! Finally he started our Roomba robot vacuum and essentially played chase with it, touching it so it turned directions and “chased” him! Granted it was the second day in a row with not enough exercise. We have been in the middle of a cold snap with temperatures between -27 and -41 degrees Celsius with windchill factors as low as -52, and taking him out other than to pee was not ideal. Blocking him off from the kitchen is next to impossible as our kitchen/dining/living room area is all one open area. He also would never be able to leave the living room as the kitchen leads from the back to the front of the house. As for resource guarding he does this with extra tasty treats designed for slow eating and things he’s snatched that he shouldn’t have. We try “trading up” with high value treats or toys, but my kids are quite nervous and he has bit my husband twice (the first time he was resource guarding me). He is very smart and catches on to new commands and tricks quickly. He attended puppy school and is now in a level one obedience class. We are trying to divide up responsibilities to get him less focused on me. The kids quite enjoy teaching him tricks and they are attending classes with us. I read Pippa’s three books, The Happy Puppy Handbook, The Labrador Handbook and Total Recall before we brought Chester home and have referred to them many time’s over the past few months as well as the posts in her Facebook group. Any advice is welcome! We really want a well trained, well adjusted pup who we all enjoy!
Hi Angie, welcome to the forum! I'm sure someone with more expertise will be along shortly to help you out with Chester. But oh my gosh -41c sounds cold! I'm embarrassed about the fuss I made about it being -1c here this morning now!
