Training your Companion Labrador Retriever
(Field or show training information is also available upon request)

A gentle and reliable method of training is the clicker method. Pick up a clicker at your local pet shop and you are ready to start training.

The first step is to condition the dog to the clicker. Choose a few hours that you can devote to training and carry a pocket full of dog food and the clicker with you. Go about your regular business and occasionally click the clicker and immediately follow it with a treat. Do this at least 20 times. I recommend portioning out his daily amount of dog food and using that as a reward so you know for sure he is not being over fed. If you have to use treats then do this sparingly.

When you click and treat be sure to catch your dog in a moment when he pauses between activity or is just sitting and watching or doing something positive. Never click and treat while he is actively engaged in any sort of activity, positive or negative. This is just a conditioning exercise and he will soon will start trying to figure out why exactly you are treating him.

You will find with this method that your dog will start training himself. If he gets a treat he will ask himself what he was doing when you clicked and treated. If he has done that activity more than a couple of times he will think he has figured out the puzzle and start doing that activity more often to see if he gains the treat. It is an outstanding method and mentally challenging for your dog and so you will see fast results. Make sure you have the action in mind that you are training for and be patient until he does that action. Allow him to find it on his own.

Once you have him conditioned and he knows that a click is followed by a treat the official training can begin. Pick an activity that you would like to train him to do, such as sit. Walk into a room, your dog will follow you and just be patient. As soon as he sits, click and treat, move to another location and repeat. Do this until he follows you and automatically sits to get the click and treat. He has then figured out the puzzle. Now you need to attach a word to the action and say sit before he does the action, then click and treat.

Now you need to move to the next action you want to train for, let‘s pick down (lay). Your dog will be a bit confused at first. Why are you not treating for sit but you are treating for down now? Eventually he will get it and be laying down to get the clicks and treats. As soon as he understands the second action with key word start alternating “sit” and “down” and only clicking and treating when the desired action is completed. To teach your dog to heel, click and treat when your dog happens to walk next to your left side. Of course allow him to wander but when ever he comes back to a heel position click and treat. Ad the key word once he has a sold hold on that and you are set to go. Now you have a dog that heels, sits and lays down.

Labradors are very smart and so you may find that during training he catches on faster than this information says he is supposed to. That is fine. If you think you need to move ahead more quickly than do it. If not, that is fine also.

Eventually the point of the training is to drop the treat and only reward with a click but I would recommend not to remove the treat at all from puppies under 16 weeks and every time you are teaching a new action always give the treat until that action is worked into the rotation with the other key words and actions. I personally feel bad asking them to do all of these actions for me and never treating so I still treat on every 3rd - 6th action they correctly give to me.