Hi Folks, first time posting, we have a 10 week old black lab called Willow. There are lots of positives to her behaviour, has a strong bladder, is friendly, has no problems with eating or guarding, is happy to be in her crate, is getting mouthing vs biting and is picking up the various bits of training we are doing with her. The one aspect she seems completely uninterested in is follow me/recall (as outlined in the puppy handbook and online articles). We’ve tried everything from toys, to food (including her normal food and higher value puppy treats), praising her when she does. But the recall is either non existent or very slow - we obviously aren’t using any kind of command at this stage. She just doesn’t find us that interesting when outside. The breeder had a very large garden which the litter had full access to (it’s probably twice the size of ours) so I’m wondering if she just feels very comfortable, and it’s not ‘scary’ enough to want to follow us? It’s now becoming an issue as she’d rather be elsewhere in the garden chewing on things, and if we walk over to remove the item she has, she runs off - which is obviously great fun for her! But we just can’t find something that makes her want to be in close proximity to us. We’ve also tried to hide from her, so that she will come looking for us but this doesn’t happen. We usually find her sat in a corner quite happily chewing on a stick or bark. Has anyone else had issues with creating that strong instinct for their puppy to stay close? I’ve had a fox red lab from a puppy previously and she was extremely keen to stay close at this stage. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!
Hi, have you tried the steps in Pippa's Total Recall book? We're using that for our 20 week old lab and it's working well. Running away from him initially worked as he wanted to chase us. If the garden is familiar to Willow then perhaps the safety response isn't triggered, but running away from her might help? There will be lots of more experienced people on this forum who may be able to offer more advice. 10 weeks is really young and it sounds like Willow is doing really well at lots of things!
Thanks very much for the reply! We also have the total recall book, and have started to work through the steps. We found that we were probably a too far away which meant she was easily distracted while enroute, and just expecting too much from her given her age. We’ve also reduced her access to the flower beds, which were obviously much more fun than us! We’ve also done some more follow me and rewarding when she comes over to us. All this has started to have a positive impact and Willow is much more interested in what we’re doing. Hopefully we can continue to make things interesting for her and she wants to be with us. She’s almost ready to start going on the ground outside, so time will tell, but I’m glad we’ve been able to progress. Thanks for the support! James.
