At around what age are Labs sensible off leash in busy places?

Thanks @selina27 will do

 

I would say no, don't let your dog play on lead with other dogs, particularly off lead dogs. If you do, then this is what your dog will expect to do and loose dogs running up will be your dog's cue to pull and play. This can be a nightmare habit to break.

I also do not routinely do 'meets and greets' on lead. I do them rarely, but my dogs expect to ignore all dogs they see when they are on lead, and they get to say hello as an exception (usually to dogs with people who have been taught in puppy class that everyone else wants to let their dogs meet and greet on lead and I haven't been quick enough to head them off ) which means they are calm because they don't expect to get to say hello, it's a surprise when they do.

What you also should not do, is tighten the lead, and try to drag your dog away - this is behind the advice 'loosen your leash and let your dog be natural'. This advice is aimed at dogs that might be nervous, and to prevent your dog from forming an association between dogs running up and you dragging your dog away (so your dog can become nervous because something unpleasant happens when dogs appear).

So what you need to be able to do is get your dog to turn away from dogs that are running up and just return their attention to you. You don't have to have your dog ignore the other dogs, just disengaged and return to you. Indeed, I point out approaching dogs to my dogs if they haven't seen them, because I don't want them to be surprised.

How to get a puppy to do this before you have trained that level of engagement? I find a handful of mucky, smelly, sardines on the nose will often do the trick and when Charlie was younger, I walked everywhere with a freezer bag full of sardines. I once used 3 tins to get him to walk by a kennel full of dogs at a Gundog Trainer's place....ah, what fun and games Charlie was as a teenager. I later found out certain games were even better, but he is exceptionally motivated by games.

Betsy is much easier. But that's because I knew to work on engagement from the get go, and knew to get her to ignore most dogs from the get go. She doesn't need sardines. Thankfully. They don't half make your hands smell.

It is very expensive, but Susan Garrett's online recallers course is one of the best going for training engagement. I don't like all of her techniques, and I particularly dislike her use of head collars and I also don't like her insistence on engagement, but the rest of her techniques are really great. In particular, there are plenty of videos of dogs ignoring other strange dogs running up, so it's exactly on point here.

 

Thanks @JulieT

Just to make sure I've got it, is this correct:

- If I see off-lead dogs coming up to us, stop and shift his attention from them onto me with a high reward treat to keep his engagement and be more rewarding than other dogs?

- When passing on-lead dogs, have a high reward treat ready to lure him past them to keep his engagement on me and prevent lunging at them?

This one I'm unsure on:

- If I get surprised by a dog coming round a corner and don't have time to get his attention and he's already over threshold and lunging on the lead, I shouldn't try to keep him back with a tight lead, I should loosen the lead and let him be natural, and try to re-engage him with a tasty treat and move on away from the dog? I suppose the trouble I got into was trying to keep him away with a tight lead, which took all of my ability and there was no chance I was also going to be able to get to a treat while trying to maintain this control of the lead. I guess I feel responsible for keeping my dog under control (which I am), but if other people are letting their dogs wander about up to on-lead dogs, then I'm not the one in the wrong there if my Lab is reacting to them?

 

Try not to worry too much about it too. It's not the end of the world if your young hooligan jumps around on his lead time to time - only if he keeps doing this, this is all he will ever do.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with luring a dog - in lots of cases it is both quicker and more effective than any other technique you can choose. What's bad about it is if you never move on from luring a dog, in which case a lure becomes a bribe and then you are stuck with that. So you need a training plan too that eventually means you can reward attention on you, so don't forget that's your long term aim.

In the surprise dog scenario, I'd run my hand down the lead (end of lead in my right, run left hand down the lead), that way get close to my dog and deploy my sardines - I'd hold sardines against Charlie's nose and walk away with him following the lure.

 

Thanks @JulieT I had a success with passing a person yesterday, didn't need to lure first. My lab looked at the person, then looked at me, at which point I treated him. So that was good. Then a bit of a fail...passed a dog at the very end of the walk, when I had run out of treats - poor planning on my part. It was a tiny little thing and I didn't want to scare the owner with my hyper oversized puppy so I just had to keep him at bay with a tight lead while they passed us. Well that was a learning moment for sure, always have treats til the very end...