Hi I am sure the difficulties that I am currently going through with my lab have been experienced by many (if not most) and talked about on here at length, nevertheless I thought I might reach out on here for a bit of help. I have a 9 month old male lab. He's a great boy, very friendly and loving but he is getting increasingly difficult to handle and it feels as if all the hours of training we have put in (and spent a lot of money on) has hardly worked at all, particularly when we go outside. He is terrible with pulling on his leash, he gets overly excited when people come over to the point of it turning into anxiety, he jumps up at people, his recall is non-existent, he is an obsessive licker, a picky eater and he is obsessed with meeting other dogs to the point of pulling on his lead to almost strangling himself. He is our first dog and myself and my partner have trained him from the day we got him from basic obedience stuff like sit, lie down, stay and leave it, to settle, manners when walking through doors etc. The real difficulties lie when we go outside, particularly walking, reacting to dogs, recall etc.. We've tried every technique to improve lead walking from the stop and start until the lead is slack, walking with treats so he is to heel and rewarding that etc., to using different leads but we end up having him on a halti so he at least gets some quality of walk and we can control him. When it comes to other dogs he gets so desperate to see them and we try lead him away from other dogs, let him say hello when we say and reward it with treats and we've done hours of recall work to no avail. When people come over we ask people to ignore him until he is calmer but this never seems to work, if anything it seems to make him more anxious and he doesn't settle until our guests leave. Unfortunately other dogs, people and smells are way more interesting than we are or the treats we have. It is almost like we do not exist particularly when outside. It's frustrating because we try to keep engagement up and reward checkins but it doesn't seem to stick and both my partner and I feel terrible that he isn't able to run about and play off his lead, walk appropriately, greet people and other dogs in a calm way because we feel it is lessening his quality of life and we have let him down with the training we have done. It has got to the point that even the basics he will now only do 50% of the time and generally there has to be a reward or he looks at you as if to say "I'm not sitting or lying down if I'm not getting a treat". At home inside he is better but not much, it certainly gets dialled to 11 when we go outside. At home he is still very boisterous, running all over the house and generally being naughty but he his quick to settle down which is a relief and we do reward that behaviour. We tried to socialise him and do all the things people recommend when you get a puppy but I must admit I have got lost at times in the myriad of training techniques, hints and tips and the understandable lack of any consensus has meant trying to find ways to adapt training to the dogs temperament has been a real challenge. Any advice would be great. Thanks!
Hello, I think it is fair to say, many of us have been in your situation now. Our lovely puppies grow up to be big , enthusiastic dogs, but really with the head of a daft pup. This is the most challenging age, all that training tends to go out of the window when outside. It is just too exciting and interesting, and everything we have trained is not proofed yet. My Meg was just the same, made me feel despondent about every having the calm family pet we had dreamt about. There are no quick fixes, just patience and training, and they do come good. The best thing that made a huge difference to us were obedience classes. Training around distractions is much more beneficial than at home. Try and join a class if you can. Meg started off the worst in the class by a mile, with a lot of perseverance, it was the making of her. She is now the perfect family pet, but I credit it all to a year of postive obedience classes. Good luck.
I have a 7 month old so I am 2 months behind you so maybe not the best to advise but we are having some of the same issues with the excitement on walks. what lead / collar set up are you using? we use a harness with a front fastening and that is a lot lot better than a back fastening where they can pull with their body weight against u. at home we are continuing with lots of impulse training ie having kibble in a fist and only opening fist to give individual pieces when he is super calm - this is helping
Hi - thank you both for your replies We will certainly look at some obedience training classes. We do so much at home around lying down and settling, waiting to be let outside, walking through doors, trying (largely failing) to get him to calmly greet people who come over etc. but like you say most of this goes out of the window outside. It's almost like a switch goes on and we cease to exist and all that matters is everything else outside. We'd love to take him into a pub or to see extended family at their house but he cannot be trusted unfortunately. I hope everything just clicks as he gets a bit older but looking at him now it feels like it will take a miracle! In regard to the lead, we've tried everything but we currently use a halti for the most part which he loathes but it is the only thing that ensures we can at least get a reasonable walk and control him. We do occasionally switch to a harness with the front fastening to see if there's any improvement, in the hope to move him on to a flat collar eventually, but he's so strong it doesn't really deter him from pulling like the halti does. On the harness or flat collar my fiancé really struggles to walk him and I am concerned he'd pull her into the road if he saw another dog so he's only allowed on a halti with her. We're fortunate to have a large back garden that he can run around and play fetch in and we have tried normal flat collar walking and recall in the garden and he's pretty good (sometimes) but when this moves to a walk outside the home environment all the training seems to evaporate. He pulls so badly that on a couple of occasions almost passed out and will never come when called so now he cannot be let off his lead at all. It is incredibly frustrating because we want to do right by the dog but he's such a challenge. I understand there's certainly an age issue as seems to be the case with most dogs and he is starting to take an interest in females, but his behaviour is so manic and seemingly anxiety driven at times I do wonder what on earth we can do!
