I keep getting that negative reply 'well it is a Labrador '. Our main problem is scavaging for food. Despite only being 13 weeks old she is jumping up at work top surfaces. Also we are a working farm with horses and chickens so she has taken up eating every kind of poo she can find! (Thankfully not her own or other dogs!). Please help never had this quiet so bad with our golden retriever so I am now worried everyone is right and we have taken on the wrong breed!
Diligence and vigilance on your part, maturity on puppy's part is the way to get through this. Teach LEAVE IT and DROP IT and GIVE but she's very young so expect to work some time on those things. I expect jumping at the work tops is controllable if you keep her tethered to you at the times she does these things in the house. Till she gets big enough to actually reach the work tops that's just bad manners and she has to learn good manners. She is with you when that happens, right? She doesn't have free run of your house? She shouldn't. Some people crate, I am not a fan of crates after seeing them misused too many times but we did build a big sturdy pen to keep puppy contained and safe for times. We put the crate, door open, in the pen.
A "Leave it" was the first thing my trainer and I trained on Juno at 13 weeks old. We trained by having Juno watch us putting some treats on the ground and saying "Leave" as each treat was placed on e ground. Hopefully your puppy will look everywhere but at the treat. When puppy looks at you pick up one of the treats and again when puppy looks at you and not the treat say "Take it". Continue with the rest of the treats. Once you have a good "Leave" you can start using it to stop the poo eating but you may want to use high value treats to make sure you have the best reward. You can succeed - Juno used to pick up poo of all sorts but age and a good leave does make a difference. Can't help you with the counter surfing as it's not something I've had to contend with
Well, it is a Labrador! Labradors are big, strong, over friendly, over enthusiastic, bouncy and boisterous dogs when young (and before training) . They get into all sorts of mischief. They do grow up and become a bit more sensible though. So they say.... In the meantime, I'd say pick your battles. Keep the counters clear, or use a baby gate. Keep her on a lead around poo (if practical, otherwise...well...). And so on. Train the things that are most important to you first - but expect it to take sometime.....management is key - keep your stuff picked up, have the puppy in puppy safe rooms, use a crate for some downtime when you need a break, and so on.
Hehe, yup, she's a proper Labrador Willow is an awful counter-surfer. It doesn't help that she has been allowed to self-reward on occasion, where we've not been as vigilant as we should have been. I have an open-plan kitchen so have taught an alternative behaviour in that the dogs have to sit outside the kitchen area while I'm in there, so they're not able to swipe stuff as I'm preparing meals. Then, when I leave the kitchen, even for a minute, I ensure that all surfaces are clear and clean, without even a crumb to lick up. By being consistent with this, she's a lot better than she was, but it's not generalised to other people's kitchens, and she managed to swipe three slices of buttered bread from my sister-in-law's kitchen worktop when we were visiting a few days ago, because I stupidly thought I'd just turn my back to get a plate to put it on. The best way of training this is take a heavy newspaper, roll it up and whack yourself over the head for being sloppy. Willow is also a great poo eater. Sheep and goat is everyday fayre, and she also enjoys the occasional munch on horse and cow when we come across it, as long as it's fresh enough. That's not the most disgusting of it... To be perfectly honest, I don't really care about her eating herbivore poo. She has regular worming treatment, and I have a reasonable "leave it" cue, which works with the everyday stuff if she's being a little too voracious. As she's getting older, it seems to be getting less and less common, and she's far easier to divert from it, but I doubt she'd ever be fully cured. As Julie says, pick your battles.
I've never had to deal with a counter surfer but a decent leave it command stopped the horse poo eating by my lab. Rabbit poo was my spaniels favourite but he seems to have grown out of that as he's found more exciting things to do. Try not to panic, decide what kind of behaviour you want and what management strategies you can put in place (baby gates and crates are a godsend in my opinion!) then get yourself a large bucket of patience and get training - it's lots of fun and you'll get a well behaved dog out of it
