Training Labrador Retrievers

One of the most important aspects of your relationship with your Lab is the Alpha Dog Principle. This concept is one you must understand and implement fully in order to have any significant success in training your Labrador.

The concept is simple: all dogs are engrained with the basic need for an authority hierarchy. This means that if a dog was all alone in the wilderness and then came upon another dog, they would have to establish a power relationship between them before they could be in any proximity with each other. This would usually be played out by a fight to determine the stronger of the two dogs. Once one of the dogs won and mastered the other, the other dog would submit to the now-determined Alpha dog in every way. The Alpha dog would eat first, sleep first, and decide where the two dogs would travel to.

This relationship must be established between yourself and your Labrador. If you don’t distinguish yourself as the Alpha dog over your Labrador, your Lab will be confused and then eventually will assume that he is the Alpha dog. This will lead to difficulties in training and even aggression. In addition, dogs feel much more secure when they know that they are being watched out for and being taken care of. A much more satisfied and content dog will be the one who knows that his human owner is the Alpha, and will thus protect and provide for the dog. In otherwords, your Alpha status is imperative for your relationship with your Labrador. The problem should be obvious at this point: since you are not a dog, you can’t fight the way two dogs would fight together because of the possibility of injury to yourself. So how do you assert yourself as the Alpha dog?

Part two of this post will be put up on Monday– make sure to come back and find out!