We got our new black lab puppy on July 25th, 2008 at seven weeks old. This is the first dog my husband and I have owned on our own, but we've always had dogs in our families. He's an absolute love, but both we and the dog were in need of a way to communicate our wants, needs, and expectations to help us all be able to live together in a semi-harmonious fashion. Neither of us had any experience training any type of animal before, so we were on the hunt for a way to teach our new furry friend what we expected of him.
I'd been doing a whole lot of reading on positive reinforcement training, and used those concepts to housebreak him with surprising success so far! We're still working on "proofing" that, as he's about 90% reliable, he only has accidents when he loses focus and gets too excited, as we found out this weekend when we had another dog over the house.
I had heard about clicker training years ago, but never really learned anything about it. I was on yet another now frequent trip to the pet store when I saw a bucket full of clickers at the register and had a "hmmmm......I should check into that...." kind of moment.
After I found this website, I was hooked! This was what I'd been looking for. I identified with the principles behind the training method, and applied the concepts just yesterday and managed to accomplish a fairly reliable "sit" with the puppy in only three sessions of about ten minutes each spread throughout the day. This was the breakthrough I needed to get me motivated again (instead of frustrated by just trying to teach him with a voice cue only) to teach the new pup a few things.
I can't describe how excited I was when I actually was able to pinpoint that "AHA!" moment when he seemed to finally figure out what I was asking for. You could almost see the light bulb above his little head! I'm very excited by even just this little success so far, and I can't make to see what progress we can make in the days to come!
