OK - variation on a common theme, but she is driving us to distraction and to the point where my wife and I are seriously discussing whether we have made a mistake and should re-home her, as much as for her sake as ours. It would distress us greatly to do that. We are not first time Labrador owners, Susie is our 5th, but that gives you some indication of part of the problem - our age. First Lab, we had young children in the house, second overlapped with the first, 3rd and 4th were after children had left the nest. I was at work and my wife was usually at home. None of those dogs presented us with any problems. I mention all that to give you some idea that we are not novices when it comes to having dogs. Apart from University days, we both had dogs all of our lives. Susie can be very well behaved - sits, lies down, stays, doesn't snatch treats from the hand, waits for her meals until told to eat them, can be recalled by "come" or a whistle. She will play with us, sit with her head on you lap, or lie asleep on top of your feet; all the adorable Labrador behaviours. But then the devil in her takes over and everything goes out the window.. If there is a treat in the offing she will obey up to a point. For example, she's out in the garden and I blow the whistle and she runs to the door, but she won't come in unless shes sees me going for the treat. Try and get her to go the kitchen and she knows full well what it means, so she literally stages a lie down strategy, or runs and hides where she knows we have difficulty getting at her. She is quite deliberately disobeying us. These and other behaviours are relatively minor ones - we can just about cope with them. Infuriating yes, but copeable with. The real worry is that when a visitor comes, or if she is out for a walk and we stop to talk to a friend or anyone, she is leaping up at them, and the biggest concern, she is mouthing at their hands - and it hurts. As far as she is concerned she is just greeting them enthusiastically - no aggression - but she could hurt someone and if they didn't understand dog behaviour they could claim she attacked them. And we know where that leads. We daren't let her off the lead for that reason, and the lack of faith on the recall. At home she obeys recall (usually). On the beach, well, we daren't try. If she was a child, I would diagnose her to be suffering from ADHD (I'm a retired doctor). The advice sought? What can we do given that her behaviour at times (at least once or twice a day) is totally out of control. Do we need to seek professional advice? Is her behaviour gone beyond puppy exuberance? Should we consider re-homing her with someone who could cope or challenge her sufficiently to keep her behaviour sane? She does appear to be a pretty bright dog, and that may be the issue - she's bored.
Hello, I feel your frustration. Meg was just the same at that age..drove me to tears. I used to dread walks. The only thing that helped was weekly KC obedience classes. I really believe training around distractions was the key to her success. She is awesome now, but it took hard work and dermination. Have you or could you try obedience classes ?
Once again I agree with @Edp . She needs obedience training. Find a school that centres on positive reinforcement. The recall? She has learnt that if she comes, you apply an aversive (putting her away). In the future call her and she gets a treat. If you want to put her away, then just go and get her, or wait until she comes in. That is, come should not have aversives attached to it. @Sigurd your dog will behave better in time. She is an adolescent. A teenage mind in an adult body. She will mature and settle with age. But you are going to have to work with her too. Teach her how to behave.
Hi, I feel for you. We're going through a similar situation with our 6 month male lab. He's fine outside, he just does it to myself and my 17 year old son at home. He gets over excited when he sees us and jumps, humps and bites. We're trying to calm him before he gets a chance, we're using stuffed kongs when he's clearly excited and we're working more on his mat work(in the down position on his mat with a reward for staying down, stretched out by a second after each reward). We are also leaving him with more down time. He was at his worst a few days ago but we had a good day yesterday with ony 2 episodes and all good so far today! I think if you try to identify what the triggers are that cause this behaviour(when, where, who etc) and then use a technique that you know settles her before she does it; and minimise the amount of time she is exposured to these triggers until she's more relaxed and comfortable. I found that when we were off guard and not focused on getting rid of this behaviour, he would get the opportunity to do it again, with the result that the behaviour was being reinforced. We are all focused 100% for the past 2 days and it's working! Hopefully we can keep on top of it and our bruises can start to heal! If you haven't used a positive reinforcement trainer already maybe you could arrange a few sessions, all our techniques came from our trainer....worth every penny! I read on an old tread today that it can get worse before it gets better when you're trying to train it out of them. That seems to be what happened with us. Wishing you all the best with Meg!
Hi @Sigurd , we are going through the exact same thing - it's been an ongoing issue for a while now but because she's bigger, it's harder to cope with. Similar to you, she's great in the house when it's just us at home. She responds to cues, knows not to jump up at us or nip, waits for her food, engages well in training. But as soon as we have guests it's like she's possessed - totally over excited and over threshold. The same if we take her out, even though she got plenty of socialising when she was little. She just wants to say hello to everyone, and every smell on the ground is more interesting than any treats. It's really hard and exhausting and I'm certainly not enjoying it. She's worse than any other lab puppy we've met locally or at training. I'm reassured from the posts on here that with hard work and consistency, she will outgrow it. She's an incredibly intelligent dog and I've heard that the more intelligent they are, the more work they need to be calm (whether that's true or not I don't know). We are starting obedience classes tomorrow so we will see how that goes. Keep at it - sounds like you have lots more experience than us (we're first time dog owners) so you know how wonderful they can be when they're trained. We're just putting our faith in fate
Hi there, you could be describing my pup Isla!! She sounds exactly like Luna! Good luck with obedience class tomorrow, ours is going better now but in the first few weeks Isla spent more time out of class than in because of her excitable continuous barking, it's exhausting isn't it. Good job we've all got this forum to keep us at it!
Hi @Saffy/isla - how old is Isla? Glad your obedience training is going well. We've been doing gun dog style training for the last 3 months which has some obedience as part of it, but it's held in a field and it's all we can do to get her nose out of the grass let alone managing any training. Today my other half decided she didn't "need" the long line and she decided to run off and parade around the entire field at 80mph showing the dummy she'd just retrieved to every single person and dog in class . The new class tomorrow is also in a field which doesn't bode well, but they do focus on the KC obedience stuff rather than pure gun dog work. We put so many hours into training that it would be nice if she didn't appear to be such a delinquent when we're out in public
Going and getting her or waiting is not always an option. She comes to the recall but waits till she sees the colour of my money before she takes the final step through the door. That is what we do. As I said in my post, And getting her to go where she doesn't fancy requires a treat, except it's not a treat, its a bribe. She needs to see it and then will follow me to the kitchen. To those who are going through the same thing, my sympathies, but it is nice to know we are not alone ............ I think.
I understand. She is smart. So you have to be even more cunning. Practice recalls inside your home, where the distractions are very low. You have more chance of success. But now hide the 'money' before she is called and until she comes fully. If she comes, then give a treat secreted on your person. You are going to teach her that she never knows whether you have a treat or not.
Just jumping in to say Yalom is entering a similar phase at 7 months. It's like he can't contain himself sometimes. It's incredibly reassuring to hear others experiencing similar things. I firmly believe with dedication and a truck load of patience we will all have wonderful dogs in a year or so's time. But it is incredibly disheartening and upsetting when they're like this. I thought puppyhood was bad!
Hi Isla is 11 months old, we would like to do gundog training with her eventually but she's not old enough at the moment. I can't imagine Isla behaving in a field, she would also have her nose in the grass for all those lovely smells, our classes are in a hall so she's limited with distractions. Hope your class goes well
You might find reading Fenzi and Jones's book on Focus and Engage to be useful. Gives lots of insight into getting your dog to concentrate on you. Might I also suggest while you wait for her to mature, you teach her to retrieve? It will be a highly useful skill in gundog work
Hi,thank you Michael A Brooks,i will take a look at that book as i really need help with Isla concentrating on me more,especially while out on walks. She will really focus on me while waiting for a command or five minute training sessions at home or in class but forgets me completely when out. We are doing retrieve with her which had been going well until recently,maybe as she's reaching teenage times all her training and manners seem to be disappearing,but we'll continue with her training. Thankyou
Hi @Saffy/isla What you describe is normal. When you move out of familar environmrnt the distractions increase in intensity. You have to control the level of the distraction [increase distance reduce duration, pick mild to medium levels of distractions and reward her when she succeeds. Gradually increase one criterion at a time. You are the director of creating mock proofing scenarios.
But you've taught her to do this!! If a dog ALWAYS gets a treat, then they never learn to look for signs that they are or are not getting a treat - because they always get one. Would you go to work, if you sometimes got paid and sometimes didn't? Or would you not look for signs that your employer wasn't going to pay you this week and go home on Wednesday?? If your employer came looking for you to find out why you weren't working on Thursday and Friday and drag you back to work, would you not rather try to hide and resist this??? It's not very pleasant being taken anywhere forcibly and you're not going to get any money when you get there, after all. Of course if reinforcement is intermittent, a dog will look for predictions over when the reinforcement is going to occur and will see no reason to respond if they know there will be no reinforcer! You have created this situation by 1) not giving a treat every time the dog responds in the way you want and 2) having a big obvious 'I'm going to get the treat now' move when you do give it. You are viewing your dog in the wrong way - which is only further damaging it. You have created training problems through your own inconsistencies and the way you are relating to your dog. This situation is not your dog's fault - it is yours. You need to learn how to train your dog, through the use of motivators. Your dog is not just wilfully disobeying you for the sake of it - she is responding to the laws of learning theory. You can't blame her for that. It is science. If you want to achieve outcomes, then you need to understand how learning theory works so you can use that knowledge to control what is happening.
