I spent half an hour today playing ‘pick-up-sticks’ that Amber had collected. We then did one of her favorite things – letting her ride in the car! We went to the vet’s office in order to weigh our ‘baby’ on the large set of scales there.
We discovered that our 10 month old ‘baby’ lab weighs 90 pounds!
We had armed ourselves with her shock collar and the remote in order to be able to control her. The eye opener was that my husband was almost not able to handle her! She got excited at all the strange sounds and smells in and around the vet’s office and would not listen to anything we said, and ALSO wasn’t reacting to the shock collar!
We got her in and out again safely, but we were both really impressed by the fact that this could have been a real problem, resulting in injury to one or both of us, plus problems inside the vet’s office.
We decided then and there we were going to start TODAY – starting over with our leash training – walking her on a SHORT leash – the ‘no-pull’ one that we had put away – around the yard once a day. (This shocks her when she pulls.) We actually found out that we needed to turn the shock down, which we did, but my husband and I walked all around the yard with her for about 20 minutes. She was shocked several times at first, but then calmed down and was more cooperative, only getting shocked again when she saw one of our cats and started to run after her.
In addition to the daily walks with the no-pull leash, we plan to go back to the vet’s twice a month as part of this training. It’s important that she also get socialization plus training-while-excited practice by going to the vet’s and having to obey us. She wanted SO badly to greet the main receptionist that she wouldn’t even sit! We hope that the daily training at home and the twice a month trips to the vet’s office will get her to the point where it isn’t SUCH a big deal that she forgets all she’s been taught!
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