There is nothing like a Labrador Retriever puppy to make your heart sing. They are cute, cuddly and the way they bounce when they run makes you want to laugh until you cry. So many people want one and even those of us with a couple of Labs in our house want a few more puppies but it wasn’t until I recently watched The Dog Whisperer, that it was evident that even the best of us miss something in raising a Lab pup.
Recently, Cesar Milan had a show about raising the perfect puppy and chose 5 dog breeds to raise together. Among them was a beautiful yellow Labrador puppy (Blizzard) with a very calm and submissive personality. When he chose this puppy, it was brought to his facility with an adorable black Lab puppy. The thing that caught my attention was not how he chose the puppy but what he did to wake the dog and why.
You see, the yellow puppy fell asleep right there in the street and instead of waking the dog himself, he had the black puppy wake it for him. To do so, he got a bit of dog food and coaxed the black dog over to the sleeping puppy and only then did it wake.
Why did he do this? Why not just wake the puppy himself?
His answer was very simple – the puppy was not used to being woken by humans. However, they are used to other siblings in their pack waking them gently from a slumber. By doing so, the pup is not startled or thrown into a scary situation, which may negatively affect them down the line. This makes for a more submissive and secure dog in the long run.
You learn something new every day! All the times we have woken our own Lab Brats up quickly and briskly could have increased the fear factor and made them more timid in the long run. For Dakota, we could have woken her up gently with a small piece of kibble and then when Cheyenne came home, we could have coaxed Dakota into waking her for us.
Did we end up with timid or scared dogs because we didn’t follow this method? Yes and no. You see, there are some things that still startle our dogs and in the beginning it was more difficult to fix that fear trait.
Today they are well socialized and secure Labrador Retrievers but if we had to do it over again, we would definitely employ this great technique.
