obedience class. Prong collar for walks, training. Two German shepherds here. All of the above were imperative for us.
here. This isn’t Russia.
Skylar or Alohi. Pick one.
This is a paid video series from the UK. You get one lesson emailed to you every day for 25 days. Each lesson is about 5 minutes long and teaches the dog owner one activity that will help make you be sexier to your dog than the squirrel at the other end of the park.
We are on day 7 now and I am impressed so far. Our dog has responded very well to it - even though he isn’t very food oriented. Just having fun with your dog for 5 minutes a day seems to have high training value when the fun is actually used to cue certain behaviors from your dog.
We taught our dog to roll over in about 10 minutes, which is very useful for getting him contained when you need it. Today’s lesson is to get your dog to follow you around everywhere.
Thanks for posting. I've bookmarked the site for when I get my puppy.
3. Take it to training class. Local Petco should offer a basic one.
4. Get a training collar that allows you to deliver audible, vibration, and shock messages to help in training, esp if allowing it to run off leash.
I take my pooch to the dog park and/or long hikes several days per week. She is only 1.5 years old and she is surprisingly mellow and trouble-free when she is asleep.
If I don't exercise the dog, well, she ate a large cardboard box yesterday in my living room.
We have a black lab (11 years old) and a chocolate mutt/lab (6 years old). We got both as puppies. My advice:
Don't let them in any room that has carpet until they are potty trained. We have hardwoods, and took up all the rugs until they were trained. Once they go on the rug, it's hard to get them to stop doing it since they can smell where they went before even after you clean.
As others have said, lab puppies like to chew. Our older lab chewed anything and everything, and used to want to chew/bite our then young children too. They have sharp little baby teeth, and those bites hurt (although they won't cause any serious damage). Be sure to have lots of things around they are allowed to chew on, and substitute an allowed item any time the pup tried to chew something not allowed. Men's white socks tied in a knot were favorites for ours. You can also wet a knotted washcloth then put it in the freezer. The frozen cloth helps soothe the puppies gums while they're teething.
Our dogs both hated the crate, so we gave up on the crate training pretty early. Crates are great, though, if your dog will learn to accept it. If not, what we did is just baby gate the pups into an area of the house (in our case the kitchen) where they could do little harm.
You will need to take an 8 week old puppy out literally every hour or two while he/she is awake to go potty. As others have mentioned, you need to stay out with the pup and give lots of excited praise and a treat every time they actually go potty outside until the pup gets the hang of it.
Lab puppies are the cutest animals in the world, and they are lots of fun, but lots of work too. Once they get older, they are the absolute best dogs. Ours have the run of the house, and are wonderful companions. Enjoy, and please share pictures!
As others said, crate training from day 1 is important. Lots of positive reinforcement with treats and squeaky toys. Potty training is pretty easy w a Lab.
Also, this may be hard to do in a pandemic, but socialization is another thing to do consistently. Bring the pup to the park, outdoor restaurants, etc.
They'll stay in a 'puppy phase' until they are about 2. My lab finally just stopped jumping at people when greeting them.
Exercise- This is the fun part. We go on 2-4 mile hikes in the santa monica mountains about 5x a week. He definitely gets my lazy ass off the couch.
Enjoy it. Labs are awesome.
...In March 2017 we adopted a rescue dog, sort of a Manchester terrier mix from Puerto Rico. You might recall my recounting here how she was supposed to have been spayed, had an incision, etc., but turned out to be pregnant and in April 2017 she had 6 puppies. We kept the first one that popped out and the rest went out via Magnificent Mutts of Hillside, IL, which is where we'd gotten the mother.
I started a regular routine of getting them outside to do their business and rewarding them with a treat and effusive praise instantly upon their producing the requisite #1 and/or #2. The treats and praise were reserved exclusively for that activity, and before long they were both trained in that respect. This training requires patience and observation. You can't let the pup out, then take yourself into the kitchen for orange juice, then look out and wonder if they did anything. You have to be an active part of the training. There will be bumps in the road--we had indoor accidents that tapered off over a few months. We have a well-established routine now, and all I need to do at around 9:30 or 10 p.m. is say "Out!" and they leap up and head to the back door, where I put them on their leads (we have no back yard fencing) and they go out. Once they were pretty well trained to pee and poop outside I stopped rewarding them on the spot; instead they get a little treat upon coming back in. Of course, this leads to the dogs wanting to turn the tables and wanting to go out just so they can come back in and get a treat! But I still watch them--no excretion, no treat.
You should expect that for some time this puppy will want to chew things you'd rather they didn't, so puppy-proof what you can. We had just gotten new fabric-covered furniture for our family room and the pup decided to chew on the small draped corner of fabric close to the floor. My wife was able to repair it by taking a hidden piece of the same fabric and grafting it, refolding, etc., so you don't see any damage, but my point is that when you have an animal living in your house with you, things are not going to be pristine. The chewing impulse eventually went pretty much away--we got her other things to safely chew on, and she sure loves to run around with a tennis ball in her mouth.
Good luck!
EDIT: We did keep the puppy in a crate for the first several months. Once she was fully trained to not go inside we let her sleep wherever she wanted, except in our bedroom--my wife wouldn't mind but I don't care for it.
Is that still a meme on this board?
I find that dogs are always watching us closely (our attitudes, or moods, our tone of voice, etc.) and work hard to understand whatever behaviour they think we want from them. So be consistent, clear in manner and happy to be around.
Done correctly, it helps with potty training, behavior, anxiety, discipline, etc. This is especially the case if you don’t want the dog sleeping in your bed or on the couch at night.
Of course, you have to be willing to have a crate lying around somewhere long-term.
Put the dog in their crate every night to sleep and if you ever leave them at home alone. The first couple of nights might be tough, but you have to just let the dog bark it out. Eventually they learn to love the crate and they feel safe there.
occupied. The potty training you can read anywhere. Labs, like kids, have their terrible 2's. They will chew anything, out of boredom or curiosity or out of nothing. They have mega energy. If you are a runner, your new family member will love to take you running... and not just once a day, lol. They need space, toys, activity. My eldest lab will be 15 in October and until his last bout w cancer, was always and still the best athelete in the house. (BTW, he has beat cancer 3x!!)
and we've found it helpful in the 5 months since we got our terrier/ poodle mix. Overall the key to any training is consistency.
Similar to raising children, but perhaps even more important when raising a puppy, you need to go out of your way to be patient and calm. The dog will feed off of your emotional energy and it will go a long way in forming their permanent personality.
Puppies (especially labs) are going to chew things and cause some havoc. Just resign yourself to that, and make sure things you really care about are put out of reach.
Crate training is also a must. It will help greatly with potty training and also set nighttime boundaries with the dog.
You should also make key decisions up front. Like, will the dog be allowed on furniture or beds? Will you feed it once a day, twice a day, etc. Dogs are very much creatures of habit and once a precedent is set, it's hard to undo.
Lastly, frequent exercise goes a long way. If the dog is not getting exercise, they will find other destructive ways to burn energy and frustration. Take it on frequent walks (and assuming you have a fenced yard, take it out for games of fetch or other rigorous activity several times a day).
to go outside. It may require you to take the dog outside every few hours, even in the middle of the night just to ensure they it doesn't go inside. Lavish the dog with praise when it pees or poops outside.
We trained our dogs to ring a bell hung from the back door when they had to go out. We would take their paw and hit the bell, then let them out. They catch on pretty quickly.
Give the dog something to chew on or it will find something. Labs love to chew.
If you don't want the dog on the furniture, establish that pretty quickly with the dog and get the whole family to buy in. If you have one weak link in the chain, you are going to fail.
Buy good dog food - Eukanuba or Blue Buffalo. Canines are like humans in that if you feed them crappy food, their shit will be weird.
You control everything they eat, so if they get fat, it's your fault.
Labs have a ton of energy and need lots of exercise. If I were you, and I'm not, but if I were would teach it to play fetch and have a couple of sessions with it per day. A puppy that young won't need more than 15-20 minutes per session before it gets tired. By 6-8 months, you should be playing with it for an hour a day. Also, Labs get to be heavy dogs, so don't do too much too soon with it as far as long walks. If you want to protect their joints as they grow, ease them in to the longer stuff. My golden was a year old before he went on a walk longer than a mile to mitigate the future joint issues he is likely to have. Just my .02. Good luck!