Welcome to Pet Talk Shelby's Mom.

We have two Lab puppies...one (Sadie) is 17 months and the other (Cincy) is 6 months. Sadie is confined to the kitchen during the day and Cincy is still in a kennel. At night they sleep in our room.

I guess my answer is yes, they do settle down, BUT only if you work with them. Making sure Shelby gets plenty of time to run and play when a you are home is a great step. Also, you can give him mind enriching toys for when he is in his crate. One suggestion is getting a Kong and filling it with peanut butter.

We try to do as many things with our dogs as we can, but since we both work full time and are involved in other things, it isn't always easy. We took both of them to basic obidence classes and continue to work on the training they got there. (even if it is only 5-10 minutes to review, sit, down, stay, ) Sadie is much more trustworthy then Cincy at this point and therefore gets to do more "off-leash" stuff. We take them different places they can run and/or socialize with other daos. Sometimes it is "dayschool" sometimes a drop-in class at the training place we use, sometimes it over to a family members house to play with other dogs, and sometimes it is just playing with them in our backyard or taking them for a walk...whatever, they do, we have found if they have time to get activty, they settle down better later.

I would suggest playing recall games with Shelby, to get him used to the come command. Put him on a long-line (20 ft or so). Wait til he is interested in something and call him to you. If he doesn't come right away, pull him to you. When he does come, praise him and give lots of treats. Do this A LOT!!! Once he starts to get better with this, you don't have to treat him everytime (in fact if you don't, you will probablly get better response from him) Practice this in the house, with or without the line too. When he start to come relaible you can slowly start to give him more freedom off the leash.