Little Monster

We made sure that Cooper was rested for tonight's training class. We didn't want to be accused of doping our puppy again this week. Although a bit more animated, he is calmer than any Labrador puppy I have ever seen. The entire group is extremely relaxed and progressing quickly. None of the puppies jumped up to enforce the OFF command.

The group is ahead of schedule so we began to learn a trick this evening and the trainer will be accelerating the training plan. All that means is that luring will be reduced sooner and replaced with expecting/waiting for the proper behavior.

Copper and his classmates performed solid SIT and WATCH. Teaching him DOWN has been a struggle. He can easily be lured, but has not associated the word with the movement yet. The trick we started to work on was to have the puppy army crawl. Actually, we may not proceed with this trick as it may only encourage creeping in a DOWN STAY - a common trait for Labradors.

We also been questioning the time Cooper spends on the sofa and in bed with us. It is nice to be able to have a cuddly puppy to curl up with, however, we may have created a monster. He cries to be pulled up on the bed/sofa and is almost big enough to jump up on the sofa by himself. Now we need to teach our little monster that he must be invited up. It would have been easier to keep him OFF from the beginning.