Progress, interesting behavior, and a question about training length

Greetings all,

I posted last week abut my five month old Golden Retriever puppy,
Brody, and several behavior issues. I am happy to say that he appears
to be making real progress. This week however, his the last week of
his training (we had a trainer come to the house once a week for the
past seven weeks to work with him and to show us how to work with him
as well. I really want to make a solid effort/commitment to work with
Brody everyday to ensure that he continues to progress. I am trying to
come up with a schedule that works both training and fun into our day.

What I plan to do is get up an hour or so before I have to go to work,
feed him, take him outside to do his business, let him run around the
yard a bit, and then go for a ten minute walk. He doesn't pull on the
leash as much as he previously did, but we still have some work to do
in that area. After going back to the houss and maybe after a brief
rest, I figure we'd brush up on stay, sit, down, and we will work on
come as well (he's not as good as that as he is with the others, but we
will get there).

After work, I'll pretty much do the same as the mornings, feed him,
play for a while in the back yard, a ten minute walk, and more work on
the basic commands. This would make it 15 - 20 minutes in the morning
and 15-20 minutes in the evening. Is this enough, or should I get
another short training session in later in the evening as well? I
don't wantt to over work him (realizing that he is still a young
puppy), but I don't want to underwork him either.

Another situation that we are working through is Brody's relationship
with my sister's dog - an 11 year old golden retriever (Nugget, whom I
love very deeply!). My sister and her family live upstairs in our two
family house. In the three months now that I've had Brody, he and
Nugget have been together less than once a week. Brody, in his puppy
exuberence (sp) jumps on her to get her to play, but Nugget is very
passive and really never puts him in his place (as an older dog usually
would). Only once or twice previous to this weekend has she growled at
him. She does wag her tail at him, so she does like him, she just
wants no part of the puppy nionsense, and he wants to play, play, play
with her.

This weeknd, though, has marked a turning point The weather was nice
and we finally got all the work done in the back yard, and we were all
outside yesterday evening. Brody was being his usual obnoxious self
(spervised, of course), and Nugget finally had enough, growled (and I
mean GROWLED!) at him, and at one point held his paw in her moutn. He
didn't bite him - he didn't yelp - but she was obviously letting him
know that he was crossing a line.

Today we were all outside again and Brody was bothering Nugget, and
Nugget did show her teeth a couple of times. Things settle down a bit
and I had my niece go inside to get a cuple of Brody's rawhides (one
for him and one for Nugget if she wanted one). Brody was occupied with
that for a while, and Nugget had no interest in the rawhides. A bit
later, I went in for a few minutes and Brody came in as well. As we
went back into the sun room, i noticed that Nugget was laying with the
rawhides between her outstretched paws. Brody went over and tried to
take one and Nugget was guarding them and would not let him take one.
It was real interesting to watch this. Brody was soon occupied with a
tennis ball, and Nugget kept the rawhides in her possession until we
had to go in. It seems that Nugget is finally asserting herself and
drawing some doggie boundaries for my over-active pup.

Any advice, opinions, suggestions are appreciated!

Janet B...

Find even more training and activities for you and your Golden -
you'll both have a whole new world open for you and a rewarding one.

And don't give rawhide - lot's of hazards associated with it IMO.