I’d also suggest being a little careful about the potential overuse of treats as a reward. The dog quickly comes to expect the food. My feeling is that the reward for the desired behavior should be limited to your affection and demonstrated approval…praise, etc. The only time Lady Margaret the Incontinent ( Maggie, a 13-year-old, 75-pound collie/shepherd/husky mix) gets a Milk-bone is after a successful bath, brushing, or toenail-clipping, and if she doesn’t get it, she’ll follow me around the house with her nose up my ass until she does.
I don’t really remember how I got either of my dogs to take treats gently…but I did get them both trained to balance the Milk-Bone on their nose until I gave the OK. Retrievers tend to be “soft-mouthed” - it’s a desired trait in a breed whose job (ostensibly) is to retrieve downed fowl, so the enthusiastic grab for the treat shouldn’t necessarily be associated with a tendency to bite. Both my dogs have enjoyed what I’ll call “mouth play”, for lack of a better term…but they’ve never lunged or nipped at anyone unless there was some other mitigating factor (“Don’t touch my paw…I’ve torn a nail!”).
I’ve also had one notable failure - a 6-month-old German Shorthaired Pointer that was nearly untrainable (in his defense, he had been abused/negelected, and his habits were well-established by that point). I picked him up…actually, I “liberated” him; the owner knew I was coming but wasn’t home, and left him tied to a tractor wheel with a length of rusty cable in a bare-earth yard. He ate the inside of my car on the way home. In the following he weeks, did learn to sit and stay…mostly. He also ate my deck and a portion of my garage. He simply couldn’t be trusted…at any sign of an opening, he was GONE.
One more tip - a 25-foot (or longer) canvas training lead is really nice to have. As you progress through the pup’s training, you’re gonna want to take the dog to open spaces. A really long lead will allow you to practice a lot of activities, yet still give you some control, particularly if you want the dog to “come” to hand. You can do the “sit-stay-come” routine, but a lot of dogs will then run right past you. With a long lead, you can reel that sucker in as the dog approaches, and get the pup used to the idea that it’s supposed to come to YOU, not just that it’'s OK to get up…
IMHO,
The biggest thing to teach any dog is to heal, immediately. I have a yellow lab that I am training for search and rescue. He’s doing great, but he can get so involved on a scent trail, he will cross roads without looking. By teaching him to heal immediately, you can stop him before he wanders into danger. It also works great when we are out and he is off his lead and sees people, (he loves people,) and takes off to greet them. While I know he is just wanting to play, some people are frightened by a 85 pound dog running at them full speed. Yelling the heal command and watching him come to a skidding halt on his belly usually breaks the ice with the people and keeps him from going too far.
Another thing that helps is getting him around other animals and people as soon and as much as you can. That way you don’t have an animal that goes crazy when people visit, or you take him out in public.
The best thing you can do for your dog is to teach him not to be food agressive. You need to start now. When he is eating, take his food away and then give it back to him, but only if he is sitting and not lunging for it. then let him eat a bit and then take it away again.
Offer him a treat but don’t let him take it until you are ready to give it to him. Don’t allow him to grab it out of your hands nor nip you in the process. If he tries, pull it back. (with Sasser I say “take it nice” which is her cue to not be grabby with her treats)
Have other people around her when she is eating and have them take her food.
You will appreciate the effort your put into teaching her to not be food agressive later when she is full grown and you have children running around her when she is eating.
Teach your dog not to go out the house door or car door until you give the ok. Do this whether they’re on leash or not. My dogs will sit (quivering in anticipation) in front of an open door until I tell them “Okay.”
Teach your dog not to mind if you take his food away. I always started by moving my hand toward the food dish while they were eating, and praising lavishly if they let me get close. Progress to where you can take food out of their mouths without them protesting. One value of this is that you shouldn’t then have to worry if your dog is eating around a child, and the child without thinking tries to grab the dog’s food.
Teach the dog to potty on command. One book I remember suggested using the phrase “Hurry up!” as a cue. Of course this means going out with the dog and watching them when it’s time to pee and poop and using the target phrase liberally until they make the connection.
I second the recommendation to get the dog out and exposed to lots of different things (including riding in the car) and to lots of different people, and different dogs, if possible. One thing a puppy kindergarten class is good for is exposing the pups to other people and other dogs. This is A Very Good Thing for young dogs.
Good luck and have fun! I miss that good old stinky puppy breath.
I checked with one of the people that actually taught our boys “gentle.” I was wrong about the wap on the nose. Please do not take my ever saying that as implying that people should hit their dogs; I probably should have said “tap” instead. But that being what it is, I’m told it wasn’t necessary. They caught on real quick.
This is whiterabbit’s mother, one of the people who trained our dogs in “gentle.” It just involved taking the treat away from them till they learned not to grab at it. And same with jumping at their food dishes – we taught them to lie down while we’re preparing their food, then sit and wait for the dish to hit the floor before eating. How? By taking the dish away and putting it on the counter for a few minutes. It only took one time to teach Isaac, our lab, not to jump on us when the food approached.
We did start off training with food, but with very small amounts – took meat sticks and broke them into about 1/2" chunks. But we found that with Isaac in particular, training him with a toy was far more effective. We taught him to sit and stay by just holding his toy up. He would sit and stay for as long as we wanted him to. Then a good play session with the toy afterwards was a great reward. Rusty, our golden, just wants love and lots of it; praise is all he wants. And within a couple of weeks, we’d stopped using anything but praise for either dog once they discovered how happy it made them feel to make US happy.
We did use food, however, to train the dogs on “leave it,” which involves learning to not pick up food or other things the might find. We had the dog lie down and placed a small treat on the ground in front of him while saying “leave it.” As soon as he looked up at us to acknowledge our dominance, we’d pick up the treat and give it to him. And then we’d do it for longer periods. And then we took him to the pet treat aisle of the local pet store, which has treats of all varieties down low where dogs can grab them (stupid shelving, if you ask me!), and any time he’d start to sniff at something, reinforce it with a “leave it!” and then a provided treat as a reward. This command was one we thought was particularly important for Isaac to learn, since like many labs he’s a true garbage hound, will eat anything he can find.