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Old 11-15-2005, 03:18 PM
Blarg Blarg is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 1,519
Default Re: 10-week old yellow lab pup - male

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1. Im a fan of alpha rolling the dog as punishment, although some people say this is bad to do.

2. Labs are easy to train; they are very eager to please, and I doubt you'll have much trouble as you might with a Jack Russell or a more stubborn breed.

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This is one of the things I was going to suggest.

The standard, and very workable thing, is to give him a rap on the nose and say a firm NO(it doesn't have to be loud, just very firm, with a direct stare).

But rolling a dog over onto its back and getting on your knees right over it works very well with dogs too. Stare until they break the stare first. That's their hard-wired doggie understanding of submission and dominance.

Don't think you're being mean or anything; that's how dogs operate. If you don't establish clear dominance with a dog, then you're establishing submission. You don't need your life run by a dog.

Why there would be anything negative about that I can't imagine. It doesn't even involve so much as a light smack, but gets the idea across very, very easily and flawlessly.

Putting the dog outdoors when he does something often works very well too. Heck, they often like being out in the back yard or balcony, but they get the meaning very well when you put them out there. A little whining and such from them to get back in is not a bad thing here, but confirms to them that they're out there for a reason. Dogs can definitely feel lonely and guilty, and just chucking them outdoors for a bit can be a very low-impact way to get the point across powerfully.

One thing about biting -- it is extremely hard to train it out of a puppy you have trained it into. Though puppies naturally like to bite stuff, don't do some of those fun biting games with them that everyone likes to do, like having them tug on the end of a sock or leap for it while you make it jump around in the air. Dogs that learn biting games when young will have biting extremely strongly psychologically imprinted into them as acceptable or even desirable behavior. Do not get your dog thinking that his teeth are a cool way to have fun and respond to the world. BIG MISTAKE. It can be hard not to play these fun games with puppies, but I've never seen a dog this has been done with even a little that was not much harder to train into submissiveness and safety later. And I've trained countless dogs.
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