After developing positive retriever training methods with my first two retrievers, Lumi and Laddie, both Goldens, I decided to try my luck with a Lab. In the record books, Labs dominate the ranks of field champions over the years by an overwhelming margin, of course nearly always subject to the evolving tools of the traditional trainer. Was it possible, I wondered, that a positive field trainer would also find it advantageous to work with a Lab rather than a Golden?

I asked a number of experienced traditional trainers before I chose a new puppy about their thoughts on the difference in training Goldens versus Labs, the only two breeds I was considering. I didn’t find in general that they had strong opinions either way about the likely advantages of training one breed versus the other. But I forgot to ask Carol.

In the end, I chose Lightning, the pick of an excellent competition-bred litter, a black Lab puppy who at seven weeks appeared to have unlimited potential for a successful career in field competition.

In this journal, I’ve described every step of Lightning’s progress as I’ve developed a training method for him that I call Positive Retriever Training (PRT). Lightning’s now 26 months old, but I haven’t written a new post in several weeks because I still haven’t come up with a full solution to his keep-away behavior. At times we’ve seen excellent progress and had great training sessions, but the results don’t yet stand the test of time. Lightning’s keep-away behavior maddeningly always comes back. We train every day, and I’ve experimented with countless solutions, including suggestions from other trainers, but I feel it would still be premature to report anything more than I already have in previous posts during this period.

Meanwhile, I’ve been taking my competition dogs to Carol Lundquist every few weeks for over a decade. Carol is a rural and sports med holistic veterinarian. As I’ve learned ever more about Carol’s expertise over time, I’ve come to look with ever greater confidence to her thoughts on all aspects of my dogs’ well-being.

Because Laddie’s health has been fragile this last year, our little pack been seeing Carol more frequently than usual, currently about every three weeks. And one question that often comes up during our conversations, as Carol works on the pups, is Lightning’s training progress.

From those conversations I’ve learned that Carol seems to have a different view on the subject of Goldens versus Labs being trained for competition using positive methods than other dog people I’ve talked to. From  decades of working with many, many dogs and their owners, she has jokingly concluded that electronic collars must have been invented specifically for training Labs. I think she feels the difference between Goldens and Labs as subjects for positive training is night and day. As it understand it, her observation is that wanting to please the handler is a strong component of the Golden’s personality, whereas Labs essentially work for themselves.

I am not ready to say that my understanding of Carol’s view matches my own view. After all, I spent years struggling with Lumi’s recall and keep-away issues, and it took me nearly a year to figure out how to repair Laddie’s unwillingness to bring a retrieval article back across water after he stopped being able to do it when he was about a year old. Nor have I ever completely solved Laddie’s tendency to vocalize when handled on land, and especially water, blinds, going all the way back to when he was a puppy. So much for the Golden’s overwhelming desire to please their handlers.

And by no means am I close to giving up on Lightning’s training.

But I thought I’d write a post mentioning Carol’s views on what she seems to believe is one of the problems I’m facing, simply that I’m using positive methods to train a Lab rather than a Golden. I guess I’ll leave it to you the reader to take whatever value you might from my impressions of Carol’s insights.