Description
The Labrador Retriever is one of the most popular and easily-identifiable dogs in the world. The dog is reasonably large, standing at about two feet at the shoulders and with an extremely heavy and muscular body. Labs have floppy ears, longish noses, long legs relative to their stocky bodies, and distinctive otter-like tails that help them to steer their bodies when swimming. They come in three basic color variations--chocolate, black, and yellow--with a wide variety of shades and hues within those basic colors, anywhere from a foxlike red to a nearly-white shade of lemon.
Labs are extremely friendly. This can be a very good thing--it's easy to introduce your Lab to a new person without lots of barking or aggressive behavior--or a very bad thing--since the eighty-pound Lab will often express his or her friendliness by jumping on that same new person, sometimes even knocking them down. Although Labs are highly intelligent, they often get a reputation for being fools of the canine world due to their overexuberance and even hyperactivity. Labs also remain mentally immature for the first three years of their life, exacerbating the problem of their overfriendliness considerably. Careful training can get these intelligent dogs to think twice about their actions, however, and can make them "safe for company."
Training
Training for your Lab should start as early as possible. At about six months, Labs are fully-grown (physically, at least--mentally, Labs require about three years to fully develop), and training at this point becomes much more difficult simply due to the dog's large size. So introducing simple commands ("sit" and "heel" in particular) should be done before that six-month threshold in order to make later training much more manageable, and to discourage jumping and other rude behavior to some extent.
Consistency and positive rewards for good behavior (as opposed to negative punishments for bad behavior) are mainstays of any effective dog training, and both will work well with a Lab--with some reservations. Although an individual trainer can be perfectly consistent with a Lab where rewarding good behavior and discouraging bad behavior are concerned, the Lab will form its behavior patterns based on its entire human "family"--meaning that if one human tolerates jumping while another human forbids it, the Lab will usually continue to jump due to the "mixed messages". It's important to make everyone in your family aware of what rules the Lab is to follow and to make sure that everyone enforces those rules. Although Labs are very intelligent and can learn rules of behavior quickly, they can be just as quick to "unlearn" rules that don't make sense to them. So be as consistent with the rules as possible.
The Labrador Retriever is one of the most popular and easily-identifiable dogs in the world. The dog is reasonably large, standing at about two feet at the shoulders and with an extremely heavy and muscular body. Labs have floppy ears, longish noses, long legs relative to their stocky bodies, and distinctive otter-like tails that help them to steer their bodies when swimming. They come in three basic color variations--chocolate, black, and yellow--with a wide variety of shades and hues within those basic colors, anywhere from a foxlike red to a nearly-white shade of lemon.
Labs are extremely friendly. This can be a very good thing--it's easy to introduce your Lab to a new person without lots of barking or aggressive behavior--or a very bad thing--since the eighty-pound Lab will often express his or her friendliness by jumping on that same new person, sometimes even knocking them down. Although Labs are highly intelligent, they often get a reputation for being fools of the canine world due to their overexuberance and even hyperactivity. Labs also remain mentally immature for the first three years of their life, exacerbating the problem of their overfriendliness considerably. Careful training can get these intelligent dogs to think twice about their actions, however, and can make them "safe for company."
Training
Training for your Lab should start as early as possible. At about six months, Labs are fully-grown (physically, at least--mentally, Labs require about three years to fully develop), and training at this point becomes much more difficult simply due to the dog's large size. So introducing simple commands ("sit" and "heel" in particular) should be done before that six-month threshold in order to make later training much more manageable, and to discourage jumping and other rude behavior to some extent.
Consistency and positive rewards for good behavior (as opposed to negative punishments for bad behavior) are mainstays of any effective dog training, and both will work well with a Lab--with some reservations. Although an individual trainer can be perfectly consistent with a Lab where rewarding good behavior and discouraging bad behavior are concerned, the Lab will form its behavior patterns based on its entire human "family"--meaning that if one human tolerates jumping while another human forbids it, the Lab will usually continue to jump due to the "mixed messages". It's important to make everyone in your family aware of what rules the Lab is to follow and to make sure that everyone enforces those rules. Although Labs are very intelligent and can learn rules of behavior quickly, they can be just as quick to "unlearn" rules that don't make sense to them. So be as consistent with the rules as possible.
