Spirit Labradors
Spirit Labradors, a small kennel located in Southeast Idaho. We raise and train chocolate and yellow labrador retrievers.
I just finished up force training Ace, an 8 month old puppy out of Rebel and Dizzie and owned by Mark Lamonoco of Idaho Falls. Ace has been a joy to train. He has caught on quickly and so full of energy that he can be trained for extended periods of time without losing any [...]
We started Ridge on double marks last week and I can see I have made a few mistakes or handler errors. We have been throwing the doubles using a device called a “Bumper Boy” which is a mechanical thrower. It has a megaphone which makes a duck quack getting their attention and throws a mark [...]
The link below will take you to a short podcast on Exercise Induced Collapse. http://www.akcchf.org/news-events/multimedia/podcasts/exercise-induced-collapse.html
Force Breaking to Retrieve Note: Make sure to distinguish between negative reinforcement and punishment. Punishment extinguishes a behavior while negative reinforcement causes a behavior to start or continue as does positive reinforcement. The e collar, when used after a behavior is a form of punishment, but when used before the behavior and then stopped when [...]
About a two weeks ago I began force training Ridge. If you are unaware of what force training is you should read up on it. A good book is the Tri-tronics book of Retriever Training or the articles by Mike Lardy. You can find information online. In a nutshell, force training is the use of [...]
Took Ridge out to a local pond today. We have been training about 5 days a week with Ridge. Throwing dummies in the pond with a remote throw. Ridge is hitting the water very hard and doing water retrieves of about 60 yards. He swims smoothly, not like a puppy at all. He loves to [...]
Yesterday Connie and I went out to work with Ridge on retrieving in the front yard. This is fairly new to to him to have a remote throw but that is very important. With another person throwing the dummy you may lengthen out your retrieves and it lets the pup know that birds don’t come [...]
Ridge is now 14 weeks old and I have been working with him on an infrequent basis. today is probably the 6th day of training on sit. As you can see in the video below, Ridge is already doing very well. I have been increasing the time he is required to sit and have been [...]
This past week I have begun teaching Ridge to sit. I started the day he was 12 weeks old. I wouldn’t recommend starting to teach sit when your puppy is any younger but you can start anytime after that. Start by getting some quite small pieces of hotdog or cheese. I prefer small quarter inch [...]
Yesterday about 8:00 pm we gave Ridge his first pigeon to retrieve. It is a dead and frozen bird. I like to use frozen birds to start out a puppy because I believe a live bird is just too much for a young puppy to handle. Similarly, a freshly killed bird is just too floppy [...]
Spirit Labradors is a small kennel and we may only have two or three litters of puppies each year. We hunt our dogs regularly throughout the season and they have the opportunity of retrieving many different species of waterfowl and upland birds.
Our breeding philosophy does not include simply breeding for color (we may have Chocolate, Yellow, and Black Labrador puppies for sale). We believe that qualities of character such as drive, determination, and heart, coupled with a gentle disposition are more important.
