Lyons Leadership

When a child steps into the road without knowing about the blast of a car horn, and continues walking, it takes experience to become conditioned. When you step off of a curb, and hear a car horn, your head turns both ways, as you jump back, looking for the car. The difference is conditioning.

This is going to require a few minutes of practice, outside of the presence of your labrador. It would be preferable to do this with any family members available, but may be successfully done alone. What we need to do is develop a sense of timing. Here is where the previously called for cans with the pennies will come in. Have the cans rinsed clean and dry. Insert six pennies in each can, tape the top shut, and crush the sides of the cans, so as to make them square to prevent the cans from rolling, to avoid creating a prolonged sound.! Silence is Golden!

Be careful not to make a noise with the cans. If you should accidentally do so, praise must accompany the event. This will tell him you are not reprimanding him, and that he should ignore it. When more than one dog is there, each labrador must be individually praised and given direct eye contact and non-physical praise.

Make it a rule to Praise with Sound, with one exception. That exception is when something is being addressed after the fact. When you find out something that happened outside of your presence, that’s the only time you give sound without verbal praise. To teach your labrador the “recall” or “come” command, we need to pick a phrase, and select a “key” or “cue” word in that phrase that we will use.

The second command must be accompanied by sound. The next request would be treated as a first request. The first instance of any phrase you will use must be presented without the accompaniment of sound. If your labrador should respond properly to this first request, “your-dogs-name-good-boy,” praise him immediately-even before he begins to move.

Any response, the twitch of an ear or tail, a shuffle of a foot, a brief glance, any reaction at all, to any command, always requires spontaneous, instant, continuous praise, for however long your dog is thinking about your request, (even if he’s thinking of leaving!) Continue praising constantly until your dog comes all the way to you, even if it requires that you move backward as you continue to speak praises and coax, even plead or beg, (but not to repeat the command phrase).

Don’t think that he will always perform the way you want him to, because we are not yet at the conditioned response level.

Later, when you are done with all of the intricacies involved, test it out like this: Find yourself and your trained dog in a comfortable situation, like yourself sitting in your easy chair and him snoozing by the fireplace. Ask him to come in the proscribed manner. When he jumps up and sticks his big wet nose in your face, tell him he’s good, and tell him he’s free. Let him resume his leisurely pursuits and call him again.