FWIW I just thought I’d share some of my early experiences with my new Labrador puppy. She is now 9 months old and 58 lbs.; we purchased her from a breeder when she was 2 months and 14 lbs. She is a very strong and enthusiastic representative of her sporting breed, beyond what I think would be typical for other dogs of a comparable age. A couple things we learned early along the way were to keep her in a smaller, confined area in the house, expanding it slowly as she aged. We used flexible indoor pet fencing that worked pretty well. We also kept a leash on her at all times – this sounds a little goofy, but worked real well as her territory expanded. She chewed a little on furniture and wall trim, but overall not terribly bad. My favorite Veterinarian quote: “Well you know, Labs eat everything.” Worst thing we think she ate was a wine cork, (our bad). We dropped her off for two weeks of retriever puppy training for obedience reinforcement, bird retrieval introduction, and gunfire exposure. When we picked her up the trainer said “You don’t have a quarter horse there, you have a full-on thoroughbred on your hands.” Plenty of drive and retriever instinct, so much so she has difficulty focusing on a specific task. He prefers training this kind of dog over a dog that lacks interest in retrieving because it’s something you can’t teach a dog – either they have it or they don’t. Interesting side note, he said more people are bringing him mixed-breed rescues to train, and they are way more challenging to work with.
So my pup is a lot of dog to handle, particularly for my wife, but loves meeting people and other dogs. She can be a very sweet dog. Looking back at when we picked her out, we were able to observe the mother and she was also very energetic, literally jumping straight up in the air to greet us. Also, the pedigree of both parents were very strong on Field Trials, etc. That should have tipped us off to what we were getting into, but when you look into those puppy eyes… There is some advice out there that you should observe the litter and see which puppy behavior appeals to you, or look for dominance or submissiveness. I say LOOK AT THE SIRE AND DAM, and pedigree.
Fast forward to today, we’ve taken her back for the 10-week intermediate training – more obedience, e-collar, retrieving upland and water. Trainer says this is a critical time as she is at that “teenage” stage developing some attitude and it’s important reestablish not only who’s the boss, but reinforce that she needs to comply with commands, not ignore them. We’ll get a progress report and some training ourselves after 5-7 weeks, but I absolutely can’t wait to get her in the fields and woods in September when we finally bring her back home, and chase some birds! When we dropped her off, the trainer said “Oh, I remember her from previous training. That’s a LOT of dog!” A lot of friends will say, oh she’s just a puppy and will grow out of this.
I know there are those who prefer to train their pup themselves and more power to you – I think that is great. For us it was a matter of providing consistent and appropriate training for a dog of this caliber. These trainers work with these animals every day and can read them real well from what I’ve seen.
Like I said, I just wanted to share our experiences for anyone who may be interested in options for their current or planned hunting puppy purchase. I’d also be very interested to hear others’ training experiences or methods, successes and “other”.
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