Quote Originally Posted by tikeyas_mom
1) Getting him to immediantly follow commands like sit, down, and stay, without the use of treats. With treats, he's very quick to respond, but without, it takes a little more work. Have you ever considered an ulternative to treats? like a toy? or clicker? Clicker training can be very handy, if you are out on a walk, or if you dog happens to wander in an off leash pack etc.. Puppys NEED reinforcement, if you dont use Somthing (including alot of praise) you are'nt going to have an obiendient dog.

2) Getting him to stay until I release him. Sometimes just a few minutes after I give the command, he'll get up and wonder off. Okay firstly you need to realise your puppy is ONLY 16 weeks of age, and making him sit and stay for more then 5 min is a little bit Far Fetched... Puppies naturally have a VERY short attention span. Plus he is a Lab too, wich is going to make him a little bit more difficulat to train (due to stubborness).

3) Getting him to be more gentle around kids. My mom does daycare, and today I let him outside when some of the kids were out there, and he was jumping all around and running in to them. I'm assuming you did your research before you bought this puppy, so You should know that Lab puppys are VERY hyper (especially around children).. Now that isn't a bad thing, you just need to know how to focus your puppys attention when there are children around... Have you introduced your puppy to the children, put him into a sit command, and let the kids pet himget to know him. keep him on a leash when there are small children around. If you just let him run out into the yard with a bunch of kids running around, of course he is going to run with them.

4) The last one, that I can think of at the moment, is getting him to stop eating poop. We try to keep an eye on him when he is outside so we can see where he poops, but we can't watch him all he time. this behaviour is very common with young pups. They will often outgrow it. Sometimes dogs do it for nutrients they are lacking in their diets, inless you are feeding a good quality food..

Most of the time it is just because it smells "yummy". You can try putting tabasco sauce on the piles, but honestly, if you are right there, the best solution is just to pick it up right away. I would think you would do it anyways since there are small children running around your yard just s willing to eat the poop lol.

I hope helped a bit.
First off, this is a siteen MONTH old puppy - not a sixteen week old puppy. This dog is old enough to be holding a stay for as long as the owner wants.

Secondly, and most importantly, the click in clicker training is NOT a reinforcer in and of itself. The "click" doesn't mean anything to the dog UNLESS you follow it up with a reward. The click isn't rewarding at all. It becomes rewarding when paired with a treat/toy or other reward. So carrying around a clicker and clicking without a reward is useless. As all the material on clickers will tell you, it's c/t. C stands for click. T stands for treat. Done properly, you should NEVER click without the treat. That's why they are together: c/t..

Just FYI.