Yeah I ordered sound beginnings for pup. Still on the lookout for a used version of hillman if I can find one.

Trust me I understand the whole burning out a pup. And even more likely burning out of a trainer. I've watched plenty of my buddies do this. I'm determined to avoid this. But I also am genuinely interested in the training and methods. I've always been a super big dog lover and love all dogs. But something about a really well trained lab is so dang awesome.

That being said I'm so lost on which method to go with between Mike lardy, Evan graham, or stawski.

I know they all teach about the same stuff but because this will be the first dog I've trained I need something that's extremely in depth and talks about how to read the dog and how to fix problems. I would love to have all three and be able to learn from all of them buttt money..

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Posted by DirtyMikeandtheBoys

Member since May 2011

19429 posts

Posted on 10/15/17 at 10:20 am to Timmayy

quote:
but because this will be the first dog I've trained I need something that's extremely in depth and talks about how to read the dog and how to fix problems

1. Every single interaction between you and the pup is training, whether you think it or not, the pup is learning from you. That being said, from day 1 you should require her to be calm before she gets any kind of reward....food, water, attention, etc. DO NOT GIVE HER ANYTHING TO CHEW ON. AT ALL. Teething is unacceptable. NO TOYS, NO ROPES, NO TREATS. If you do, you will have to train away her hard mouth (force fetch) at a later age. It's easier to just teach her from the start that there is no such thing as an object she's allowed to play with/chew on. Here reward for anything and everything is retrieving. There are no other rewards besides retrieving and attention for you.

2. balled up socks thrown in a hallway are perfect early starters on retrieving. 2-3 a day is all that's needed.

3. buy a kurunda type dog bed. Start her on it as soon as possible. Reatrieving is easy, steadiness is not. If she's not steady it does not matter what else she can do. The worst thing you can reinforce is letting her think she can do something without getting a command from you. The kurunda training is key in this. You put her on the bed and make her stay on it. If she gets off she gets corrected and immediately put back on it. The key here is the kurunda is elevated, so she has to make a conscious decision to get off the bed. She can't just accidentally roll off. She has to decide. Soon she will get the picture that if she steps off the bed without you telling her to, she is in trouble. This is a fundamental foundation to her obedience throughout training. (I messed up with mine and skipped this. My parents learned from my mistake and started theirs at 7 weeks, by the time she was 12 weeks she was place trained on the kurunda)

4. Never call her off the bed. Always walk up next to it and get her to heel to get off of it. This is the foundation for casting. She learns through this that whenever you place her she is only to come off of it from you heeling her or the whistle. She should ignore calls from a distance to get off place.

5. Start her on the whistle once she gets the hang of verbal commands.
1. sit (and stay are the same command, you should not have to say sit-stay, Sit alone means sit down and stay until I move you).
2. here
3. heel

6. Always either say her name or "no" before a command. ie no-here, no-sit, no-heel.

Good luck, I'd say don't get frustrated but I can guarantee that's impossible