Hi. Need some advise. We have an 11 week old black lab. He is our second but sadly we lost our first at 5 months to parvovirus so we are still new to the training. My question is , what is the best way to get Bentley to stop jumping up at us at the dinner table? He can't reach the table yet but jumps up on our legs. At the moment we give the "off" command and verbally praise him when he does. Likewise, when we are in the kitchen cooking we have a gate across the door to stop him coming in, but he just sits the barking. We try to ignore this. Are we doing the right thing? Many thanks
We crated our lab puppy whenever we ate for the first 6-8 months or so. He used to whine endlessly when we did it, but eventually he got used to it. This prevented him from picking up the thought that our dinner was his. Now that he's older, he doesn't seem quite as tempted to see what it is we're doing at the table. We still don't feed him from the table and instruct our guests religiously to avoid doing the same. I would say you're doing the right thing by keeping him away. I know it sounds like torture, but he will get over and be better for it. The first few months are crucial for avoiding bad habits, so a few months of putting up with barking/whining will help you avoid a lifetime of begging/jumping. It's amazing how many bad habits we saw our puppy trying out, but by quickly changing things around so that those habits couldn't solidify, they slowly but surely disappeared.
