It has been a while since I have trained a dog but since I have a new lab that I have been working with it would be interesting to know what different people think are the most important things to teach a dog and at what time frame should they begin learning them.

Of course you can't be to early teaching a dog the basics of sit, stay, & to fetch on command.

I think the most important thing is not having a dog who breaks.

As for time frame, I got the Chris Akin's "Duck Dog Basics" and pretty much went by that. It is very elementary and as titled the basics. I heard he is going to come out with another one soon.

I am no dog trainer...just a new duck hunter with a dog that will go get ducks. There are others on here that will be along shortly that are more trainers than me. But my opinion is the breaking is the biggest thing to teach and easiest thing to loose control of. I also think it is dangerous for you dog and something you have to stay on top of. It is something I will work on and continue to work on until I feel she is 100% guaranteed not to do.

Good luck and congrats on the new dog...post us some pictures.

Breaking is a serious safety hazard for the dog that is trained and ready to hunt. Once the dog is trained and considered ready to hunt you should put emphasis on it.

Here's my advice to you, based on your other post, which should be addressed first.

You say the dog will only retrieve a decoy but has little interest in retrieving anything else.

Back off obedience, holding him back until you release him, or putting rules on anything about the retrieve. Make him a wild man about retrieving anything you throw. How ever you can make it happen, make it happen!!!

Remember that your goal is to make a trained retriever. The most important word in that sentence is RETRIEVER!!!

You can't train a dog to retrieve. You can put rules on how they do it, if they like it so much it doesn't matter to them how they do it.

If a dog likes to retrieve sometimes, and only if it is their particular item of choice it is hard to put rules on how they do it.

You absolutely have something to work with here, but back off rules and just make the dog love retrieving. Like they said get some bird's. A frozen bird will do a lot to a young dog's desire.

Once the dog is tearing up dirt to get it, you can start putting rules on how they go about doing it.

Leonardo,

Shoot me a PM. I live just west of you by about 10 miles. Give me a shout and you can bring your dog here (have plenty of land, ponds, lakes...) or we can come there and do some training. I'm no expert, but have learned from the school of hard knocks.

Obedience is the key to all other training, If you can't control the pup it will make teaching impossible. If the dog is obedient other issues should not come up like breaking.Obedience should be worked on seperate from retrieving since the retrieve should be fun and OB is work. Use birds as much as you can so that you bring out the prey drive in the dog and when you start bringing it all together have someone throw birds for you if the dog breaks have them pick the bird up and try again, Make the retrieve a reward for being obedient.

Thanks for the advice.