Hi everyone. My name is Jenny. My fiance and I just recently brought home a 1 1/2 year yellow lab named Honey. Honey is for the most part a very sweet dog and I think she's been dying for the type of attention and training that we are trying to give her. We rescued her from a family who lost their house in the big foreclosure mess and they just couldn't afford her any more. I know they loved the dog because they had a difficult time giving her up but they also never gave her any proper training or attention. Before we brought her home I did some research on various training methods and that's how I found this site. I am very interested in clicker training. This brings us to the first issue we are having, getting and holding her attention.
Honey seems to be getting it inside the house a little. She'll give me eye contact 10 times in a row while I'm facing forward but as soon as turn my head to the side I get nothing from her. I know that much of the future training of Honey depends on if I can get her attention so this one seems important to me.
We also live in a townhouse with no yard so that means the only way she gets to go out is on walks. Which is fine, we were glad to be able to do that for her because she never got walks from her previous owners. But, she is going to pull mine and my fiance's arms off. She weighs 55 pounds but she's VERY strong. Before we even head out for our walks I've been trying to get her attention like inside the house before we take off. That just doesn't happen. As soon as we are outside she refuses to listen to me. The clicker seems to lose all impact outside the house. When she starts pulling on the leash I've started to stop walking and just stand there. As soon as she loosens the tension on the leash I click and try to give her a treat. I say try because no matter what treat I try to give her she's not interested at all. This includes playing a game of tug which she loves to do inside the house.
When we do actually manage to walk, in between pulling episodes, and we encounter people walking, riding bikes, or with dogs she pulls even harder and starts barking like mad. But that only happens about 50% of the time, there's no rhyme or reason to her excited behavior. Both my fiance and myself put ourselves between her and the people but since she ignores us and we can't get her attention it has resulted in me almost getting knocked over as she yanked my fiance through me to get to the prize.
And since we have to walk her the loose leash training is something we need to get her to understand sooner than later.
Any tips and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much.
