Labrador puppy: feeding, care, upbringing
Before you bring a Labrador puppy into the house, you need to prepare properly. You need to remove from the reach of the baby everything that he can chew, tear, spoil. It is especially important to hide electrical wires and household chemicals.
Kids do not immediately get used to cleanliness. For the first few months, the Labrador will leave puddles and piles in abundance. If you have stone floors in your house, tiled or covered with linoleum, then you will have to stock up only with a bucket, a dustpan and a rag. And if the floors are parquet, then they can suffer greatly. In this case, it is better to cover the floors with thick polyethylene, oilcloth, or restrict the freedom of movement of the baby.
However, active and curious puppies are often limited to the size of a playpen or a home cage. In this case, the cage should be spacious enough so that the baby can sleep there, play, do his business on an absorbent sheet, eat and drink. There is no cruelty in such a restriction — this is a normal upbringing. Of course, when you are at home, the baby should be able to run freely, play and chat with you.
Labrador Nutrition
Puppies are given to new owners when they already know how to feed themselves. At first, babies are fed 5-6 times a day. With age, the number of feedings decreases, and the volume of each serving increases.
By the age of 2, the dog switches to two meals a day, and in the summer, one feeding per day is quite enough.
Breed characteristics, abilities, skills
A Labrador is a true friend of man. It’s hard to imagine a more friendly, open and cheerful breed. Labradors: the characteristic of the breed highlights a distinctive feature – the love of the world and the family in which they live. It is not for nothing that the Labrador retriever is included in the rating of the most loyal breeds to man.
They are good-natured to strangers, happy to meet new people and communicate. But loneliness is not tolerated well, the pet should not be left alone with itself for a long time.
Training of puppies begins from the first months. The characteristics of the Labrador dog include intelligence and sensitivity by nature, he listens attentively and executes commands with gestures and voice. You don’t have to be an experienced dog handler to raise an easy-going and quick-witted pet.
The Labrador is ranked 4th in the list of the smartest breeds in the world.
The dog is ready to be friends with other pets, including cats and relatives of his own sex. Uneasy relationships can arise only with birds – the innate instinct of the hunter makes it known.
This breed is perfect for families with children, as well as single, even elderly people. The Labrador will not deliberately harm children, but it is not necessary to leave the kids alone with the dog – the dog may accidentally knock over the child during the game.
The Labrador is not aggressive, so it is not suitable as a security guard.
Another weakness of the Labrador is water and bathing. The dog will be happy to play in the water, whether it’s a bath or a river. Walking with him by the water, be ready to get wet yourself – the dog will definitely share his greatest joy in life with the owner.
Education and training of a labrador
The upbringing of a dog implies its socialization, habituation to existence in the conditions of human society and behavior in accordance with its requirements. Training is designed to develop certain behaviors controlled by teams.
If you do not have any experience in raising and training dogs, you can contact a professional instructor who will either work with your dog himself or advise you how to properly train a Labrador. But in reality, training a Labrador at home is not too difficult and is available even to those who do not have any experience at all. Labradors are well trained, they love to learn and are happy to learn new commands and techniques.
Character traits and bad habits of labradors
Labradors take a long time to mature. If most dogs acquire quite adult characters by the age of 2, the Labrador does not mature psychologically until the age of three. They remain scamps and tomboys for a long time, prone to mischief, mischief and hooliganism.
Labradors need a lot of physical activity. They absolutely need to move a lot, otherwise the dog will get bored and start looking for something to do to have fun. And this occupation usually turns out to be destructive. Labradors tend to spoil and gnaw everything they can reach. They can gnaw through the door, tear off the wallpaper, dig a huge hole in the middle of your favorite flower bed. You can avoid these troubles: you need to walk the dog for several hours every day, giving her the opportunity to use up her exuberant energy.
Labradors tend to wallow in the mud, because the love of everything wet and wet is in their blood. If there is no possibility to swim, the dog will try to at least lie down in a ditch with liquid mud. After that, he will run closer to you and happily shake himself off, scattering splashes in all directions.
Some believe that the bad habits of Labradors include their incredible sociability. They are ready to immediately make friends with the whole world, including other dogs, people passing by, cats, children in strollers and janitors with a broom. The world does not always reciprocate, so one of the tasks of education is to moderate the desire of your Labrador to impose himself on strangers as friends.
It is believed that Labrador and children play well together. This is not quite true. Yes, a Labrador will never offend a child consciously, but it may well cause an accidental injury to a child: hit in a game, drop, scratch, step on its rather big weight. While the children are small, it is better not to leave them unattended with any dog.
How to properly care for a Labrador puppy?
It should be borne in mind that during the first year of life the pet behaves very actively. He will not lie down all the time, so the owner will have to create safe conditions for the Labrador to live in the apartment.
Together with the carpets, it will be necessary to remove fragile and dangerous objects – the puppy may drop something, break it or get dirty during the game.
Dogs of this breed change by about one and a half to two years. Proper training and upbringing of labradors will help the owner to better control the pet’s hyperactivity.
The decision to get a Labrador should be closely related to responsibility and the understanding that at a young age he will require special attention, and be very bored alone.
Labrador Care
How should I take care of a Labrador puppy? Feed, caress, walk, wash paws, teach commands
The general care of a grown-up Labrador also does not cause much difficulty. The dog needs to be combed with a stiff brush, washed once or twice a year with shampoo. You need to wash after walking in dirty weather, but just rinsing your paws and stomach with warm water from the shower, without soap.
Periodically it is necessary to inspect the ears and eyes, check and, if necessary, trim the claws on the paws.
With such a simple and easy care, keeping a Labrador on the street or in the house, judging by the reviews of the owners, does not cause problems.
Historical background
The history of the breed began on the island of Newfoundland in the XIX century. It is believed that the ancestors of the modern Labrador is a Newfoundland dog that helped Canadian fishermen pull nets ashore. Often Labradors’ relatives saved the lives of sailors fishing on the ship.
Initially, the Labrador became known as a hunting dog, the first individuals were introduced in the late 1800s by Colonel R.Hawker and the Earl of Malmesbury. A Labrador named Malmesbury Tramp was described by Lorna, Countess of Howe as one of the progenitors of the modern Labrador.
It was in England that the large-scale breeding of Labrador retrievers began. The first standard was adopted in 1887, the first Breed Club was established in 1916. And the breed became generally recognized only at the beginning of the XX century.
The origin of the name still causes a lot of controversy. According to one version, the black color of the dogs’ fur was similar to the labradorite stone, according to another, the dogs’ homeland was actually Labrador Island in eastern Canada. Portuguese-speaking dog lovers believe that the name of the breed comes from the words “hardworking”, “hard worker”.