Dexter is now 12 weeks old and today had his third (and final) jab so in a week we can take him out properly - thank goodness. He has put on over 2 kg in the last two weeks (currently 10.9kg) and the vet, the receptionists, the woman waiting with the adult lab all told me he is going to be a really big boy - time will tell on that one. Sleeping/toilet training has been going very well and he sleeps until 6/6.30am every night now in his crate in the conservatory with no accidents overnight at all. No problems around the house either but it has all been about being vigilant and reading the signals that he wants to go out if the doors are closed. Second week of dog training followed the same trend as the first week - he loves meeting all the new people and the dogs no matter their size or age but has an in built detector to search out the puppies who he plays with continually, barks at and engages much to the distraction of his training (and theirs) most of the time. When he concentrates he gets it all right but very distracted and by the end of the session he is exhausted and will collapse and sleep on the floor for the discussion part. it is interesting to see his growth in a week vs the other lab puppies (3 and 6 weeks older) who he has gone past and caught up with. Our real problem area is his biting/chewing as he quickly gets too rough despite having toys on hand, ignoring or withdrawing when he does it etc. My 20yo daughter will be sat there and he walks up and leaps and barks at her with two paws on her lap intending to get rough straight away. He does this from time to time with the rest of us but seems like he feels he can bully her. We have discussed at dog training and confirmed the strategy's to manage but is the most difficult aspect. He is chewing and eating anything he can get hold of (entire garden effectively) and as he grows his range of access is increasing. We are having fun with him, but he is very hard work and looking forward to getting out and about on the ground next weekend as think this will bring new challenges but help overall.
It's really important that you don't let him practise this sort of behaviour. Remember that your puppy is learning all the time, not only when you stand up with your treats to teach him something: He is learning how to behave when he is on leash and in the presence of other dogs. Unless you want an adult labrador that barks and leaps around on lead, trying to get to every dog you want to walk past, then you need to be teaching him how to manage his frustration better. Really, this is something which a good class instructor will show you how to achieve. You can give him a stuffed Kong to eat, or you can just keep training him quietly - reinforcing him for focussing on you, and using a treat to get his focus back if you lose it. The more rapidly you can reinforce, the more he will pay attention to you and learn to be quiet and relaxed in the presence of other dogs. Have you ever noticed how, when the instructor says 'go and practise sit/down/heel' - and everyone is busy training their puppy, there is absolute silence from the puppies? And how, when the instructor needs to explain something, all the barking and lunging starts? That's because everyone has stopped paying attention to their puppy and is looking at the instructor, and the puppy has stopped getting treats too - they have lost the source of reinforcement and your attention - so of course they are going to try to get to everything around them. You need to develop the ability to train your puppy with 10% of your attention using an easy task, like 'watch me' whilst also listening to the directions given by the instructor... Your 2yo (I'm assuming? not 20yo!?) daughter should not be sat on the floor when the dog is in the room. The child should be in a playpen or the dog should be behind a stairgate. You simply cannot expect to have a boisterous young dog free with a small child and not see undesirable behaviours happening - half the posts on this group, seem to be about this issue He shouldn't have access to situations, objects, locations or people where he can make the wrong choices. He doesn't get to be free in the garden. If you PREVENT a dog from doing the things you don't want them to do, they will grow up not doing them - and will never try to do them, even when you later give them access to these people/places/choices. If you allow them to have access now whilst they are trying everything out, and they do something and learn how amazing it is, it is going to make a big impression on them and they are going to try to do it at every opportunity - and it will be a heck of a lot harder to stop, later on. 95% of problems with puppies occur because they are given unsupervised access to things way too early, and chances to develop bad habits... My puppies live in the kitchen until they are about 20 weeks old. They are not out of their crate in the kitchen unless I am there to supervise. (I work in the kitchen, when we have a pup.) If they need to go out to toilet, they go out with me holding the end of a puppy house line, toilet, and come back inside again. In the evenings - with me holding the house line - they come into the rest of the house, but I am literally supervising every second of their life they are out of the crate... Every afternoon, we go out for several hours for a socialisation trip.
Thanks for your response - my daughter is 20 and sat on a chair not the floor - we have already established he loves people on the floor but gets over excited too quickly.
Right, so if he is over-excited by someone on the floor, then get her to sit in a chair - unless she wants to play with him, in which case, she can redirect that onto a tuggy rather than bear the brunt of it herself...
