Have bought a beautiful lab puppy from a breeder / trainer which is going to be trained for 6 months. As first time dog owners we wanted to make sure that we had a ‘well mannered’ dog and knew that with young kids in the house we weren’t going to be able to give a dog the focused training it would need. So we choose a breeder / trainer that we felt comfortable with and thought would guide us well. When it came to choosing the pup we sought the advice of the breeder / trainer who knew our circumstances and we thought would steer us in the right direction. Although we initially liked one particular pup at 7 weeks old the breeder said she was ‘spicy’ and suggested a different pup for us and so we went with their suggestion thinking we only get a snap shot of their personality. Four months on the pup which is now ours (paid for) seems to not be well trained in comparison to the other two pups from the same litter, which the breeders/ trainers, are keeping as working dogs (including the one we originally wanted but were steered away from) and I’m starting to be concerned that our pup does not even seem to know it’s name! Worried that we chosen poorly and/ or that the breeder-trainer isn’t putting in the same effort with our pup in order to make more money from them having to stay longer than 6 months to be trained to the standard we wanted as a starting point before they join us… What is reasonable to expect from a 16 week old pup who is being professionally trained?
Oh this is a very difficult issue. Many years ago there was a study of real estate agents/realtors. The finding was that the real estate agents put far more effort into selling their own home than they did when they received a commission from selling someone else's home. Human behaviour-when you sell your own home you reap 100 percent of the surplus. When you sell somebody else's home, the agent keeps only a smaller percentage. On the basis of that logic my hypothesis would be that your breeder will put more effort into training their own puppies than your puppy. But it's a hypothesis. There cannot be any expectation that all puppies in a litter will progress at the same rate. They are all individuals. So, it is possible that the breeder is really trying to train your puppy and acting ethically. What would I do if I were you? I would be really concerned and have evidence to support my first hypothesis if the puppy did not know her name at the age of 4 months of age. But how do you know that is true? Did you call for your puppy's attention when she was free of distractions? Or did you call her name when she was playing with her siblings or some relatively new distraction? If the former, then I would get in my own trainer to work on my puppy at your home. Expensive but you can monitor the situation and learn from the trainer. But if the latter, then you may be observing individual differences between the puppies in how they focus on their names being called. A third alternative is that the puppy has bonded with the breeder and you calling the puppy's name is of little concern to the puppy. What happens when the breeder calls your puppy's name? If you know a trainer yourself and can TRUST that individual, then I would ask the trainer to accompany you when you next visit your puppy. Don't let the trainer in own your suspicions because you will bias the observations. Listen to what the trainer observes. Only share your concerns after you have heard the evaluation. You will have more information and be in a better position to make a decision of what to do next. Good luck.
Thanks for your reply Michael. We are sometimes sent videos of the puppy being trained as an update (have had 4 in total if about a minute each). These videos are of our pup being trained on their own and sometimes with their siblings and it was during one of these videos that our puppy didn’t seem to respond to its name whereas their siblings seem to know their names. We are hoping to visit our dog in person again next week - seen her 4 times thus far - the difficulty is that I’m not sure what the pup should know by now so it’s hard to know what to look out for if that makes sense. If anyone has any ideas of what to expect that would be great! We knew we were paying more than other breeders ask for at £2500 deposit for pup at 9 weeks and another £2500 at 6 months but thought it was worth it to have the basic training covered but now that it’s looking like it’s going to take longer it will probably be another £2500
You might find the following article to be useful. https://www.thelabradorsite.com/ages-and-stages-in-labrador-puppy-training/#four When you read through this you will come to realise that the emphasis is on socialisation properly understood. That means your puppy has been exposed and if necessary desensitised to all the things your dog will meet and live with during her entire life. So you needed to have drawn up a list with the breeder of what your puppy should have been exposed to during the first 17 weeks of her life. For example, the whistle of a kettle boiling. The sound of toast popping. The vaccum cleaner. A lawn mower cutting your lawn. Children. Stairs. People wearing glasses. Sunglasses. Walking canes. Car rides. The sound of traffic. The sight of strange dogs walking down a street. The list is your home specific.And signifcantly age specific. Your puppy's socialisation window closed at 17 weeks of age. You can introduce new things after that age. But one has to spend possibily a good deal of time to do it successfully. Most of the things associated with obedience are not age dependent. Although it was not ideal I taught my dog to retrieve, for example, when she was seven years old. Retrieve could have been taught much earlier. It is not age dependent. It's possible to teach an adult dog that her name is X rather Y. Name recognition can be taught at almost any age. It seems to me that you have to ask yourself whether the breeder has socialised your dog. Consider the training of guide dogs. The emphasis there is introducing the puppy without sensitisation to all the things she will be expected to work with during her life. Since the potential needs are extremely diverse the puppy is expected to meet the world. And be comfortable and calm with that world. You need to find out how and what she has been socialised to. What did your breeder ask you about your life? Things like toilet training, prevention of resource guarding, ability to play with humans and toys, progress on being happy to be on her own, happy to be in a crate, progress on leave it, comfortable wearing a flat collar and on lead, would be some of the things I would also work on during the first six months. But my emphasis would be on socialisation.Once the window is shut the opportunity is gone.That significant period in your puppy's life cannot be recaptured.
