Yesterday in the middle of the night I couldn't sleep so I took Owen (13 weeks old) outside to potty. We do not put him on the leash yet when he is just going outside for a potty. So it was like 3 in the morning, I open the door, and he goes out. Suddenly I see a rabbit by the porch, completely still.I quietly said "please don't see it....please don't see it..." Then Owen's ears perk up, and he sees the rabbit! I calmly said "Owen, come here." He made one small woof at the rabbit and ran back inside! I am so proud of him! Also, this leads me to a question. His recall is not wonderful, we are still working a lot at it. When do labs start getting a little more independence enough that we shouldn't let him off leash unless we know he will come realiably? Thanks!
Hi DG, How very sweet, a little woof and back inside . It reminds me of the time I took my lab pup (when I was a teenager) to my aunt's and her rabbit was wandering indoors. Pup and rabbit met head-on, stood stock-still for a second, then both about-turned and charged off in the opposite direction! Regarding recall, there will be lots of advice better than I can give about recall from other forum members, but my experience is this; I watched a video of Pippa Mattinson teaching her puppy recall (I probably watched it on YouTube) and from my pup's first walk out in the big wide world, I let her off her lead for a minute or two and kept her alongside me by treating. I started in a quiet area of the local park where there were few distractions. Every time I took her out I let her off for longer and would treat/reward her for staying with me and then coming back to me. My son would call her to him and reward her, I would call her back to me and reward her. At 20 weeks I would say her recall is good but I take nothing for granted and still reward her when she comes, still practise every time we go out and my son and I still call her between us. I also go near distractions, like kids and footballs, with her on and off lead practising her staying with me. I figure I need to keep this going for a long time yet. My puppy trainer used to say to us not to let our pups off lead but to keep them on a long line until we knew they would return reliably. I have to say I ignored him and followed Pippa's advice and I'm glad I did.
What a good boy Agree with Total Recall, it's brilliant. My puppy is 16 weeks and on walks she is off lead (where safe, obviously!) about 80% of the time. I've started clipping her lead on whenever there are other dogs around, though, as she is desperate to get to them and I don't want her to practice this behaviour. Everyone is very welcoming now, but as she gets bigger it'll be less fun for them, so she needs to start learning now. That's different to recall, but I think almost the more important part of the picture; training your dog to stay close enough that you don't need to recall him/her most of the time. You'll find that the puppy recall, worked on hard, will be strong until he hits adolescence. This varies as to when it is, but you'll notice him getting more and more distracted by his environment. At this time, you just have to go back to basics and set him up for success. So, as you do with a puppy, only recall when he's already coming back to you etc etc. It depends on where you walk and how many distractions there are as to what this means in terms of keeping him on lead.
