Labradors are a great dog to train as they naturally want to please their owner. This makes training your Labrador puppy easier than many other breeds. It is important to properly train your dog as Labradors can grow to quite a large size and can cause considerable damage if they don’t know what is acceptable and what isn’t.

It is important to have the most basic training completed before you venture into the outside with your dog. These are:

Knowing the come command Being able to walk sensibly on a lead Stay if commanded

This is extremely important for the dog’s safety. Even if your sure the puppy does these commands consistently, they need to be tested with lots of distractions around before you can really trust the training.

Some tips for training your Labrador puppy include:

Never physically punish your Labrador for bad behaviour. This won’t teach it anything apart from being wary of you. Keep training sessions short. Puppies don’t have a long attention span and get tired quickly. If you try and push them to do too much you will do more harm than good. Try to train a dog before it has eaten so it’s hungry for the treats you’ll use as rewards. Rewards always work better than aggression. Praise your dog when it does something right, and don’t expect the training to go perfectly every time. Start with simple training methods, and once your dog is confident with them move onto the more difficult ones.

By: Richard Cross Terris

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