Hi there. Had my first one on one training with Max. The trainer believes that he has anxiety, she said that this can be common with yellow labs. Based on our first training she says that she believes it would take quite a while and quite a lot of effort to train him to be calm consistently. This is a huge problem because she believes my daughter with her anxiety and disabilities it's making it harder for him to be calm because she cannot help that she makes noises and being anxious and loud. I don't want to believe that we can't train him but everything she said about him was true. The dog does get more anxious and more poorly behaved when the kids specifically my daughter is around. I'm curious if anybody has had a dog with an anxiety problem and kids and wonder were they able to train them to be calm? If so was it a very very long process? The trainer said it could be a couple months but could take much longer, there's no way to know which I totally get it. Just looking for maybe some who has gone through something similar. Thank you!
Hmmm... I'm not sure about anxiety being common in yellow labs particularly. But I do have a dog who is rather a nervous character (my older dog, Poppy), and it took a lot of calm and consistent, kind handling to get her to the point she is at today. My new puppy, who is around the same age as Max, is a much calmer character, yet he can sometimes be a bit nervous and skittish around children who he doesn't know - I think it's partly the age, and gentle kind treatment will help him understand there is nothing to fear.
