sprayeddog
January 9th, 2006, 03:37 PM
Hi all,
Matty's had his first christmas and let's just say the puppy got more Christmas gifts than myself and my wife ;)
He's also completed his first obedience training. While I was skeptical of it, because I figured I knew most of the tricks already, it actually helped and Matty's a noticeably better behaved dog after the training than before. He's still far from a 'model citizen', but the course definitely helped. Maybe it was a matter of training him and rewarding him when there's distraction from the other dogs, or it was simply a matter of trainers reinforcing us on something we always knew but didn't do enough. Either way, we're happy we took the training and the $200 or so we paid was worthwhile.
Last time I mentioned Matty being a counter-surfer ... he even stole half a plate of (expensive) cheese when we're preparing food for a christmas party and got severly punished for it. Since then we've reinforced on the "off the counter" training and he's much better now.
There are a few areas I still wish Matty can perform better and I'll appreciate if any of you can give us some suggestions / comments:
1. Jumping on people
Matty doesn't really jump on myself or my wife anymore. If we're holding something really attractive (new toy or food) he'd actually sit still instead of jump up. So the training's paid off, BUT ...
Everytime we walk him and run into strangers, or other dogs, or everytime someone come visit us, Matty'd still resort to jumping up on the person / dog and nipping as part of his 'welcome routine'.
Matty's 8 months old and still very much a puppy. I just wonder if he eventually grow out of this habit or do we need to spend (a lot) more time training him in this area?
It isn't easy to train him on this because he doesn't really jump at us (or my parents for that matter, cos they visit quite often). We need to get friends + family over to train him. We did train him for one of our christmas parties when we had a bunch of ppl visiting us, and he did seem to get it at the end of the party, but the following day we had some other friends over it's the same thing.
Matty is 55 lbs and can potentially grow up to 75lbs when he's fully grown. Him jumping on ppl is NOT acceptable, but I just don't know how to train him.
2. Recall command
We must have practised the 'come' command for hundreds of thousands of time by now. Everyday when I take him out for a walk I always practise the 'come command', and reward him with treats when he does come. At home my wife and I also play the 'hide and seek' game with the 'come' command.
At home, he comes 100% of the times. However, when we go out, I'm confident he'd come only when he's not being distracted. When distracted by smells or garbage on the ground, he'd respond to the 'come' command only 50% of the times. For that reason, I'm not confident to let him go off-leash at all.
What I've been practising, is ask him to 'come' when he's distracted, and reward him when he does come. When he doesn't, I pull him over with the leash, tell him he has to come on command. Immediately let him go off and ask him to come again (and he always responds the 2nd time), then reward him.
Am I doing the right thing? Is there anything else I can do to train the recall command more effectively? I always admire ppl who can still control their dogs when they're off-leash, and under distraction of other ppl and other dogs. Our first dog was a beagle, which was hard to train for this because hounds always follow their nose. I think trained labs can be very good in this area though, I just want to know how.
Other than that, Matty's learned a lot and we enjoy spending time with him a lot more now than 2 months ago ... especially my wife. When we walk him he gets distracted by all kinds of things but I like to hide in some corner or behind some cars when he's not paying attention ... he'd always run back and look for me when he realizes I'm hiding, which is kind of nice. His barking is not much of a problem anymore, and as for biting things around the house it's under control now.
We've spent LOTS of time and energy on him but it's glad to see they're paying off.
before I forget, here're some latest pic's of Matty ...
Matty's had his first christmas and let's just say the puppy got more Christmas gifts than myself and my wife ;)
He's also completed his first obedience training. While I was skeptical of it, because I figured I knew most of the tricks already, it actually helped and Matty's a noticeably better behaved dog after the training than before. He's still far from a 'model citizen', but the course definitely helped. Maybe it was a matter of training him and rewarding him when there's distraction from the other dogs, or it was simply a matter of trainers reinforcing us on something we always knew but didn't do enough. Either way, we're happy we took the training and the $200 or so we paid was worthwhile.
Last time I mentioned Matty being a counter-surfer ... he even stole half a plate of (expensive) cheese when we're preparing food for a christmas party and got severly punished for it. Since then we've reinforced on the "off the counter" training and he's much better now.
There are a few areas I still wish Matty can perform better and I'll appreciate if any of you can give us some suggestions / comments:
1. Jumping on people
Matty doesn't really jump on myself or my wife anymore. If we're holding something really attractive (new toy or food) he'd actually sit still instead of jump up. So the training's paid off, BUT ...
Everytime we walk him and run into strangers, or other dogs, or everytime someone come visit us, Matty'd still resort to jumping up on the person / dog and nipping as part of his 'welcome routine'.
Matty's 8 months old and still very much a puppy. I just wonder if he eventually grow out of this habit or do we need to spend (a lot) more time training him in this area?
It isn't easy to train him on this because he doesn't really jump at us (or my parents for that matter, cos they visit quite often). We need to get friends + family over to train him. We did train him for one of our christmas parties when we had a bunch of ppl visiting us, and he did seem to get it at the end of the party, but the following day we had some other friends over it's the same thing.
Matty is 55 lbs and can potentially grow up to 75lbs when he's fully grown. Him jumping on ppl is NOT acceptable, but I just don't know how to train him.
2. Recall command
We must have practised the 'come' command for hundreds of thousands of time by now. Everyday when I take him out for a walk I always practise the 'come command', and reward him with treats when he does come. At home my wife and I also play the 'hide and seek' game with the 'come' command.
At home, he comes 100% of the times. However, when we go out, I'm confident he'd come only when he's not being distracted. When distracted by smells or garbage on the ground, he'd respond to the 'come' command only 50% of the times. For that reason, I'm not confident to let him go off-leash at all.
What I've been practising, is ask him to 'come' when he's distracted, and reward him when he does come. When he doesn't, I pull him over with the leash, tell him he has to come on command. Immediately let him go off and ask him to come again (and he always responds the 2nd time), then reward him.
Am I doing the right thing? Is there anything else I can do to train the recall command more effectively? I always admire ppl who can still control their dogs when they're off-leash, and under distraction of other ppl and other dogs. Our first dog was a beagle, which was hard to train for this because hounds always follow their nose. I think trained labs can be very good in this area though, I just want to know how.
Other than that, Matty's learned a lot and we enjoy spending time with him a lot more now than 2 months ago ... especially my wife. When we walk him he gets distracted by all kinds of things but I like to hide in some corner or behind some cars when he's not paying attention ... he'd always run back and look for me when he realizes I'm hiding, which is kind of nice. His barking is not much of a problem anymore, and as for biting things around the house it's under control now.
We've spent LOTS of time and energy on him but it's glad to see they're paying off.
before I forget, here're some latest pic's of Matty ...