Obi246

Hey everyone, I have a 1yr old lab who is reasonably well behaved... until he sees another dog. We used to go to obedience training and we got upto grade 4, but then i started a new job where the times clashed and can no longer go At obedience he was pretty good, we got up to doing offlead work - but a few times he would break and run to the other dogs. With sit stays, drop stays he would be fine until another dog moved... apparently that signalled play time for him. Its gotten to the stage now where he has about a 200m dog radius - that is, if he is offlead and theres a dog within 200m of us, he's gone. I know i shouldnt be letting him off lead because he doesnt have a 100% recall, but even on lead if we walk past another dog he will be pulling my arm off trying to get to it to say hello. He is usually very food orientated but from most interesting to least interesting it would be Dogs > Food > Toys > Me. Its actually quite upsetting So... does anyone have any ideas about how i can make myself more interesting and fun to him? He was so good around the other dogs at dog training, how do i make him like that all the time? Do you think i need professional help? I also saw in another post about training a "Yuck" where they spit out whats in their mouth. Any tips on how to train this? He really needs this as probably twice a week he finds something gross at the beach (dead fish, dead bird, dead baby sting ray the other day, netting etc) and refuses to let me catch him to get it off him. I think i have been lucky so far that he hasnt swallowed something thats gotten stuck. Thanks

Correct me if im wrong.. but i think you still have to go through a pet transport company even if you are flying on the same flight? My lab puppy went from tasmania through melbourne to adelaide with Jet Pets and it cost me $200 inc crate hire. If you look at some pet transport websites they usually have lots of information as well as do's and dont's

I would recommend joining a good dog obedience club. There you will learn tools to control him and he will learn how to behave around other dogs. They are generally pretty cheap - mine is only a $15 registration fee + gold coin donation each time you go. In regards to him not liking treats, I have read about people who don't feed their dogs meals... but give them dry food as treats throughout the day so they always have high food drive. What treats are you using?? My dog loves fritz and cheese. If he has no recall, you could use a long lead (~10m) so he can still have a run around, but you can pull him back to you when you call him so he learns that if you call he has to come back. Then only once he has 100% recall let him off the lead. I'm sure there are more experienced dog trainers that may have other ideas.

I had a similar thing happen at my local oval. I took my dog to have an offlead run around a baseball oval - located next to the main oval, fully fenced but one gate has no latch so can be pushed open (my dog doesnt know this yet!). Two massive GSD's ran from about 100m away over to my dog, pushed the gate open and chased him, teeth bared growling at him for about 1 minute before returning to their owner. Then i decided it was time to leave, so put him on the leash and started walking home. They then ran over to me and my dog again a second time, same thing growling with their teeth bared - i suppose some kind of pack drive fuelling them. I stood still and as my dog couldnt run he rolled onto his back and luckily they went away. After this the dogs owner took them back to his car then drove over to where i was walking and assured me they were friendly dogs. What if my dog was a reactive dog? What if they did start attacking my dog? I sure wouldn't back myself against two GSDs. And how irresponsible for him to allow them to run amok when they have no recall. Makes me angry just thinking about it again!