Choch Lab Pup

[ScreamingEagle44]

Anyone on here raise a lab puppy and can offer some tips and tricks, I am picking up my 8 week old pup next week and am hoping for some help.

[SeeGeeWhy]

Kennel train your pup - it helps with house breaking and will pay dividends in the future.

Give it a lot of exercise before doing obedience work.

Feed after exercise.

Take some obedience classes with the dog.

Be the alpha!

[Cowperson]

Originally Posted by ScreamingEagle44

Anyone on here raise a lab puppy and can offer some tips and tricks, I am picking up my 8 week old pup next week and am hoping for some help.

Puppies are all terrorists.

Once you settle that in your mind, you'll be fine. Just get ready for six months of heck, crimes repeating themselves, and then, miraculously, things will start to level out.

Very, very, very important to ensure your pup is adequately socialized with other dogs and people through those first six to nine months.

Be the Alpha. The dog doesn't care who is boss. It just wants to know where it fits in the pack of your household (husband/wife, then kids, then cats and finally the dog) so don't leave it confused. If it senses no leadership from yourself, it will assume that position and then you've got a longer-term obedience problem. This doesn't mean beating it - you should never have to do that - but simply being assertive and clear who the boss is.

Also, bribes work.

Cowperson

[Russic]

One theory on why babies are normally adorable is that it makes it harder for the mother to kill or abandon it. Lab puppies are F'n cute ... Guess why?



Perhaps you are already well aware, but all puppies are a massive responsibility. My sister in law raised a lab from puppy-hood and 4 years later it's still a never ending exercise in patience. My father in law calls it "puppy brain". My guess is he uses that term because "absolutely ######ed" was already taken.

My personal recommendation is to educate both the dog an yourself as best you can. Before we got our lab I picked up Cesar Milan's book "Cesar's Way" from iTunes and listened to it everyday before work. It was awesome and gave me a fair amount of confidence once the dog arrived.

Oh and practice pulling a sock out of an anus. Don't ask me why, just do it.

[old-fart]

Get the book "Before and After Getting Your Puppy" by Dr. Ian Dunbar. Get it now, and read it before you bring the puppy home. Dr. Dunbar is the foremost expert on training puppies and on puppy behaviour. I know Cesar Millan is the "sexy" choice for dog training these days because he has a successful TV show, but Dr. Dunbar is the true expert.

Consider their qualifications and the approaches and make an informed decision.

http://dogtime.com/cesar-millan-and-ian-dunbar.html

http://www.doggienews.com/2008/01/ce...ian-dunbar.htm

Lastly, I'll be picking up our chocolate lab 8 week old puppy the last week of May. Very excited.

[Peanut]

I second the sock-anus thing. It's a good tip.

I would say brace yourself for a solid 2 years of super high-energy and general mischief. I've found that after they reach the two-year mark the bigger dogs really start to calm down a bit, which makes obedience a little easier on everyone (dog included).

Also... take lots of pictures because labs are the cutest puppies ever!!! The only regret we have about our lab-cross rescue is we adopted him at 10 months and missed out on the cutest "puppy" months (it's not really a regret, but hopefully you know what I mean).

Read any book by Stanley Coren and crate training.

[HOOT]

I thought they were banning all dogs from Calgary?

[moncton golden flames]

i have a labrador that is now 2.5 years old, and she is great, because i followed 6 rules that i constantly hear on the 'dog whisperer'. the first three in order of importance; exercise, discipline, affection. and set rules, boundaries & limitations. implement these 6 things consistently and you should have a good dog on your hands.

ps, food is the ultimate motivator for your lab. keep some in your pocket and never be afraid to use it.

[Russic]

I'd also like to add how awesome crate training is. We got ours from a rescue and he's obviously been crate trained before. It's a massive help.

There are a ton of philosophies on training and people seem to argue over which is best. You'll notice now that Cesar Milan is popular that he gets bashed a lot. I would recommend you take in as much info as you can and see what works best for you.

I do recommend you watch some episodes of The Dog Whisperer to see if it's right for you. I really enjoy the main points that he seems to drive home every episode:

- Be a leader. As Cowperson said, they need a leader and if one isn't present they'll just assume the roll. You don't want that with a 7 lbs dog let alone a 70 lbs dog.
- Exercise is most important, then obedience, then affection.
- Don't yell or hit the dog. You can get your point across just as easily with body language and attitude, and it won't confuse or frighten the dog.

[Suzles]

Get a paediatric spay/neuter done. Cesar Milan is an amazing man - I dog walk at the Calgary Humane Society and Heaven Can Wait and Cesar's methods really do work.

[FLAMESRULE]

Dude!! We got our puppy in late December, Choc. Lab as well. She is awesome. Best advice I can give is 1) Be VERY patient, its hard, but it helps everyone 2) Socialize as early and as often as you can. Best thing we did with Iggy was to take her to puppy playtime when she was 9 weeks old. Made a HUGE difference. We take her to the offleash area by us on 19th St at least 3 - 5x a week 3) Excercise, a tired dog/kid is a good dog/kid.

[FLAMESRULE]

Also, have to agree that crate training is a life saver. If it wasnt for the -30C weather in January she'd of been house trained in less than a week. Also, I showed her who was boss right away. No barking was tolerated...she hated getting pinned, but I did it maybe 6 - 8x in the first 2 weeks and she doesnt chew on the furniture or bark at all, and never has. Just need to work on not eating the mulch in the back yard!!

[Russic]

Originally Posted by Suzles

Get a paediatric spay/neuter done. Cesar Milan is an amazing man - I dog walk at the Calgary Humane Society and Heaven Can Wait and Cesar's methods really do work.

Would that be Heaven Can Wait in High River?

[Suzles]

Originally Posted by Russic

Would that be Heaven Can Wait in High River?

Absodiddly! Indeed, it is!

[Barnes]

Practice running around in your underwear through your flower gardens at midnight trying to track down a brown dog in brown dirt in the dark who doesn't want to come back in.

I would also recommend a book called The Dog Listener.

http://www.janfennellthedoglistener.com/

Cesar is great but his theories are general in nature get pretty repetitive once you grasp his methods. In our case, his books and show did not address the issues we had with our dog because of our situation.

For example, Cesar would say that you need to eat before the dog does. Fine, I understand that the pack leader eats first. In practice though, I never eat breakfast and we eat supper kind of late. Our dog eats at 6 and 6. Am I expected to change my eating habits for my dog?

The dog listener says to make the dog sit while you pour food in its bowl and place the bowl on the counter. Either have a plate of crackers or pretend to snack on the dogs food out of the bowl while looking at him/her.

The difference in behavior after we started this is unbelievable.

The book is filled with great tips like this for people that have actual jobs and lives outside working at a dog rehabilitation centre.

[LGA]

You've gotta be tough that's for sure. My little guy is just about to turn one and I can still remember the first couple of days like it was yesterday. You have to be able to completely ignore it when it's sitting there screaming for attention or it will learn that it can scream and get attention. A lot of excercise is awesome as well, for them learning tires them out a lot faster than just running around, so I'd get the basic sit, down, stay stuff out of the way as soon as possible.

Have fun and take a lot of pictures though, puppies are absolutely adorable at 8 weeks.

[LGA]

Originally Posted by Barnes

Practice running around in your underwear through your flower gardens at midnight trying to track down a brown dog in brown dirt in the dark who doesn't want to come back in.

I would also recommend a book called The Dog Listener.

http://www.janfennellthedoglistener.com/

Cesar is great but his theories are general in nature get pretty repetitive once you grasp his methods. In our case, his books and show did not address the issues we had with our dog because of our situation.

For example, Cesar would say that you need to eat before the dog does. Fine, I understand that the pack leader eats first. In practice though, I never eat breakfast and we eat supper kind of late. Our dog eats at 6 and 6. Am I expected to change my eating habits for my dog?

The dog listener says to make the dog sit while you pour food in its bowl and place the bowl on the counter. Either have a plate of crackers or pretend to snack on the dogs food out of the bowl while looking at him/her.

The difference in behavior after we started this is unbelievable.

The book is filled with great tips like this for people that have actual jobs and lives outside working at a dog rehabilitation centre.

This is a really good hint, I never pretended to snack out of my dogs bowl or ate around it, but I'd poke my fingers in the food as my puppy ate it and made sure he knew that I was boss and had control of his food.

As for the sitting before eating thing, I think that's key for just about every scenario. I had Loki sitting before we went outside (make sure you step out before your dog does), before he ate, before he'd get a toy, basically before everything. They learn very quickly that they have to sit down and wait for you before they can do anything.

[Russic]

Originally Posted by Suzles

Absodiddly! Indeed, it is!

Do you remember Harry, the Lab who came for Christmas?

[Russic]

Originally Posted by Barnes

Practice running around in your underwear through your flower gardens at midnight trying to track down a brown dog in brown dirt in the dark who doesn't want to come back in.

I would also recommend a book called The Dog Listener.

http://www.janfennellthedoglistener.com/

Cesar is great but his theories are general in nature get pretty repetitive once you grasp his methods. In our case, his books and show did not address the issues we had with our dog because of our situation.

For example, Cesar would say that you need to eat before the dog does. Fine, I understand that the pack leader eats first. In practice though, I never eat breakfast and we eat supper kind of late. Our dog eats at 6 and 6. Am I expected to change my eating habits for my dog?

The dog listener says to make the dog sit while you pour food in its bowl and place the bowl on the counter. Either have a plate of crackers or pretend to snack on the dogs food out of the bowl while looking at him/her.

The difference in behavior after we started this is unbelievable.

The book is filled with great tips like this for people that have actual jobs and lives outside working at a dog rehabilitation centre.

That's actually a good point. I like Cesar for general all around tips on how to be a good leader and stuff like that, but when you are having a specific problem it's tough to just look it up in one of his books. For instance we were having leash troubles with our lab, and when we tried to search out info from Cesar's site (which BLOWS by the way) all we could find was info on dogs that were overly aggressive, which wasn't really our problem.

As for your cracker advice, that's actually a great idea. It's pretty much the same message being sent that Cesar advised, but it's obviously much more practical.