Twice in a week

[ydeeps]

Hi everyone, This is my first post and looking for a possible solution to a problem ive been having with my yellow lab this week. He is a 1 1\2 year old male. He has been obedience trained and does excellent with that. He has been force fetched, retrieves and marks well, and is coming along well with blind retrieves and handling. So for the most part he has been doing very well. Now during the past week, while i let him out in the morning to do his business he will stand there and look at me, and if i even move at all he bolts. He wont let me get to within 20 feet of him. This has never been an issue before but twice this week he has done it. I dont chase him but i really have to keep an eye on him because i live in town and i dont want him to meet the front end of a vehicle. Its frustrating, i train with him everyday and just have not seen a sign of this before from him. So i want to get it taken care off. Just not sure on the best way to go about it. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks everyone

[jeff t.]

Hi everyone, This is my first post and looking for a possible solution to a problem ive been having with my yellow lab this week. He is a 1 1\2 year old male. He has been obedience trained and does excellent with that. He has been force fetched, retrieves and marks well, and is coming along well with blind retrieves and handling. So for the most part he has been doing very well. Now during the past week, while i let him out in the morning to do his business he will stand there and look at me, and if i even move at all he bolts. He wont let me get to within 20 feet of him. This has never been an issue before but twice this week he has done it. I dont chase him but i really have to keep an eye on him because i live in town and i dont want him to meet the front end of a vehicle. Its frustrating, i train with him everyday and just have not seen a sign of this before from him. So i want to get it taken care off. Just not sure on the best way to go about it. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks everyone

When you let him out, is he in a fenced in area?

If not, I'd probably put him on a flexi lead to air.

[Scott Parker]

Have you done anything different in your training lately that would cause this like collar conditioning or anything where you are using a lot of pressure close to you?

[ydeeps]

i have been training him to go into a dog blind for field hunting. He was very reluctant to do it at first because of the tight quarters. i ended up building a frame that was bigger to mimic the blind with no type of covering. Slowing got him to go in there and then eventually covered it up with burlap so it was just like the blind. It worked good, took a couple weeks though but now he gets into the dog blind like a baseball runner sliding into first base. Anyway, to answer your question there has been a alot of close encounter training the last few weeks doing that. I dont think i was pressuring him to much but i did work on it with him everday. Could it be a stage of him testing dominance? He is not in a fenced in area either. He had been very obedient and i didnt think i had to worry about it.

[Woodduck]

Your dog needs to be collar conditioned for here and then be debolted. It sounds like he is already taught the here command so now reinforce the command with the collar. Make sure you have a long lead on the dog for back-up until you are done collar conditioning.

[Scott Parker]

I think Woodduck is right you need to CC him but you also need to find out what made him do this all of a sudden it doesn't sound like a dominance thing it sounds more like an avoidance thing.

[susanb]

It sounds to me like you have lost the trust of your dog. You say you had lots of "close encounter training". Just what does that mean? If you forced your dog to go into a blind that was scaring him, he could have now decided that he had just better not let you get near him.

I would not collar condition him right now. You need to figure out what went wrong and try to fix it by regaining your dog's trust. Sure, you can force him to come to you with the collar, but if you don't fix the underlying problem you can cause more problems than you are fixing.

Collars can be great tools, but the problem with them is that it is so easy to push that button and try to force your will on the dog. Teach - don't force.

[Pete]

Are you using the term bolt as would be interpreted by a retriever person.

To me it sounds like he could be staring you down in hopes of you making chase and once you move off he goes zipping around.


Bolting is a term used in regaurds to an avoidance/panic behavior to get out of the area of pressure. Like "god there is that pattern field again or man if I just run fast emough and far enough he wont eat me. Or hey theres my box I'll go hide in there.
Something to that effect

explain how your trainings been going. If its been going ok and he isnt worried then you might just have a disobedient dog and or he wants to have some fun.

Pete

[Scott Parker]

When I think of bolting I'm thinking running full out tail between legs and diving under the truck to escape pressure.

[jeff t.]

Regardless of the root cause, at this point I would keep him on some sort of lead anytime he is outside and could be injured if he takes off.