Hello, first time to this thread and wish I'd found it months ago when I was deeply feeling the puppy blues. Just turned 7 month lab, first time dog owners, no kids, husband WFH but I'm in work so out most of the day. My husband has wanted a dog forever and we moved from a house without a garden to one with and timing seemed right. It's been so reassuring reading all of your comments. I'm learning every day and to be really honest I still have crashing waves of WTF have we done and feelings of "I don't think I can do this" but then I'll spend twenty minutes in the garden training/reinforcing a DROP IT or WAIT, a wonderful off lead walk in a local safe field, or see his gorgeous face and full bum tail wag and I adore him. But bugger me, it's been, and is still, tough.
Things that work for us:
Crate training - thinking of it as his den, a safe place to chill out, grow, rest his body so it develops properly has really helped. He came to us at 8 weeks crate trained and he loves it. We had brilliant breeder that friend had got their working dogs from over the years and she gave us great tips for first few weeks that worked really well with him sleeping through the night from day 3 with us and pretty much toilet trained by the end of the first week with us. First two nights were heartbreaking hearing him cry,I slept on sofa next to his crate and just gently sushed him and put hand near him, carried him out every two hours to where we wanted him to wee/poo and said 'toilet' as I put him down and if he went (as he was doing it). Did the two hourly thing for a fortnight then three hours, then 4, now he sleeps from 9.30 to 7 every night, no accidents as of yet, good firm poos so far. We can now open the back door point to his loo area and say his command word and off he goes. If he needs to go, he sits and does a whine at the door - we've only missed this cue once so we now know his distinctive loo whine as opposed to his "I'd like to go and tear up the lawn" noises.
We mix his feeding method - mainly frozen Kongs that he loves and calm him down - food in kongs is always in his crate to reinforce it as a happy place where good things happen. As a lab he's highly food motivated but I will occasionally tuck a treat of roast chicken at the bottom or a little stinky smear of Arden Grange liver pate or Philadelphia to get him going. If he's had a busy off lead run, I'll feed him straight into a bowl as he will fill his face then crash for two hours. Early on, months 2 to 4, we'd have pots of his daily kibble allowance to hand to place a treat between his paws/into his snout when he was just calmly sitting on his bed to show that this behaviour gets rewarded and to bond by holding treat between our eyes and saying 'look at me' and when he made eye contact, immediately treat him. Taught him distracting hand "touch" to break overexcited behaviour. We learnt early on to give verbal commands no more than twice and for the basics of sit, wait, and down we say it once with a hand signal to reinforce and he picked them up really quickly.
Chewing - yak chews, ostrich bones, pizzles, various dried body parts. Ostrich least smelly and he loves them and they are long lasting. Touch unchewed wood, the only thing he's destroyed has been his bedding! Ripped up two crate mats and on his third vet bed liner. Will get him an Orvis or Tuffies bed when he's earned at as these have been recommended as good for tough chewers. Since we've made less of a fuss of stuff lying around (shoes, bags, phones) he's just not that interested and a firm, loud AH AH makes him stop in his tracks.
Enforced naps in his den - definitely! If he's up beyond two hours he has a nap, might be a little whiny at first but he ALWAYS crashes out and more often than not he takes himself to his crate to sleep. We've started leaving his crate door open in the day but always closed at night. He really likes his sleep. Mental stimulation tires him out as much as physical.
Puppy training - we did 6 weeks online in lockdown, 6 face to face, he was the youngest by several months and like the naughtiest (funniest) kid in class. Meeting other puppies/dogs was the best to come out of the experience as he just got too excited but when we did the training at home he picked them all up really quickly. Classes online worked surprisingly well so don't be put off if that's all you can book. We used McCann and Dunbar videos and going to try the Pet Gundog book now he's older.
Picking up random crap in his mouth - stones, leaves, bits of wood from our log store. Puppy trainer advised to not make a big deal of it unless he's actually eating it- we were making it into "high value treasure" by fussing and trying to take it off him. Better to just calmly offer a piece of kibble or a treat and swap it out.
Biting! Their adult teeth coming through made ALL the difference to our pup whose needle teeth led to me falling on anyone else with an older pup begging them to PLEASE TELL ME THIS ENDS and they all said it would and it did. My husband has been very, very persistent and tolerant (bitten) teaching bite inhibition and gentle mouthing (Dunbar good on this) and now I can put my hand in his mouth and he's pretty gentle and if it's too firm a sharp yelp stops him. We felt bite inhibition was important as the children he was introduced to as they will be part of his life, despite explaining very carefully beforehand that he's a pup and gets bitey so please don't wave your hands in his face as he'll think they are a toy, all waved their hands in his face cos they are kids and puppies are fun!
Handling - from day one, when he was on our lap we'd feel his joints and spine all over, fingers between claws, run hands up and down his tail, inspect his ears, open his mouth, check teeth, hold jaw open gently in case we do need to remove something from his mouth (say, for example, on his very first street walk a cigarette butt or, in the garden, a small fir cone he got lodged in his needle sharp teeth and he was so freaked out he came to me to extract it... Silly bugger). He's now happy with his poking and prodding when we need to.
Noises - from day one, vacuum cleaner, food processor, hair dryer, loud music, guitar, smoke alarm, sat outside when the bin men came, sat at bus stops to hear noisy buses, huge delivery lorries and none of them really phase him. He follows me around "helping" when I Hoover. He sheds so much that the other day I actually put the nozzle on him on very low and he loved it.
Grooming - got him in the shower very early on. He tolerates it - lickimat with Philadelphia helps. He goes nuts for towels - I think I've made them too high value for him as he doesn't look twice at the tea towels just hanging in the kitchen he now has access to as they are just there. Important lesson in dog psychology for me - the calmer and less fuss we make over things, the calmer he is. Yes, I know it seems really obvious now looking back. Thankfully, we did realise this pretty quickly and started to really play down our own entrance and exits to the house and room he's in - it was very exciting to make a big morning fuss of him but now I just quietly open his crate and he takes his cue from that. He's a big lab - cute having a 8kg pup jumping up excitedly, not at cute at 24kg!
Off lead - huge leap of faith/trust unclipping the lead but we had a very experienced friend and their dog (two year old working gun dog who our pup adores) so he basically followed her everywhere and it was wonderful. We now take him solo and he's great, ok recall, not bombproof just yet which is worrying, and he's exhausted afterwards. We play fetch, recall, off lead heel walking, swim (paddle) in river, snuffle for kibble and it's such fun. We aim to stick to 5 mins per month age to protect his joints in the future.
All seems good so far! And then....
On lead walking. The bane of my life. I've cried so many times over this. He pulls like a train and it's the one thing that is most likely to make me doubt having a dog - our puppy trainer said we have to change our mindset. City street walking your dog on lead is not really exercise for them, it's for you - getting A to B is not exciting, they want to snuffle, zig zag, run. So she advised high value treats, very short, same route, early so it's quiet, lots of U turns and stop until he comes to heel and I do this over and over and over and sometimes he's ok for about 50% of the time but generally it's AWFUL. I've had lead burns on my hand, yanked my shoulder out and just felt like I'm a terrible owner. Am I expecting too much? Any advice would be hugely appreciated. We use a harness with lead on back - are the front leading ones better? Our friends have advised a slip lead but I'm scared of choking him.
If I can help with anything please ask as we are that little further along and I feel like we got the sleep, toilet, crate training pretty well but loose lead walking is a distant dream it seems ... Also, very aware teenage tantrums are on the horizon. All in all, bearing in mind I'm very much a cat person, he's absolutely hilarious and such lovely company - I love to see him settled and happy one he's tuckered out from a busy day's puppying.