Looking for a bit of advice please!! My lab is now 15 months old, training has been good and I was really pleased with what we had achieved. I now feel we are going backwards. In the last two weeks she has started to get a bit of an attitude. Finding holes in any fence and running off! I had her recall down pretty good, although we are still working on it and still have issues with the occasional dog that she just couldn't resist running off to say hi too. But now even if it’s just the two of us when she is normally really good she will give me a cheeky look and run off in the other direction. She then won’t come back to me until she’s decides she’s ready. It’s happened a couple of times now the worst of which she found a gap in a hedge and ran off towards a road luckily a couple blasts on my whistle and she came back before she got too far but this hasn't worked every time and I’m worried that if it happens again she'll ignore me. She also got into someone’s garden and started eating the fallen apples under their tree then decided to dance around not wanting to be put back on her lead . I try to always stay one step ahead of her if I see something she might do but sometimes she’s on it before I can stop her. I was just starting to get more confident with our control and now feel like we have gone back to square one. Other than that she is a dream its just a shame to lose everything we have worked on. Do I start again with training or do I need to do something else? When she does finally come back to me I can't get angry as she has in the end come back but I feel like I’m letting her get away with it at the moment! Has anyone got any tips on how to stop this rebellious streak!!??
It's not a rebellious streak. Dogs don't think like that. They do what is reinforcing for them, and they avoid what's not or what's bad. That's it. No rebellion, no attitude. And yes, unless you are an Olympic sprinter, it's pretty much impossible to punish a dog for ignoring a recall. By the time you got to her, it's far to late to be effective. Even if punishment was a good idea, which it isn't. Yes, you just have to just buckle down to the recall training again, and also work out why she isn't staying engaged with you. You mention gaps in fences and hedges. Is this your garden? Because I reckon any active young Labrador with a healthy curiosity about the world would wander out of an unsecured garden sooner or later. Discover how much fun that is, so get reinforced for wandering, and then yep, you'd have a problem.
No its not my garden, thats impossible to escape from! Its when we are out on walks. So any gaps into other fields, gardens etc. Its only happened a handful of times and we still train and play games every trip out, so maybe we need new games to play to get her interest back.
