Training my Borador

So my girlfriend really wanted to make me happy and get me a dog for christmas. I had been yearning for a lab for quite some time to become my hunting partner, and she set her sights to get me one. Well she did, but she did not notice that the dog was not pure black lab, but rather a black lab border collie mix. I believe they call this a Borador. I have been doing a lot of reading regarding training mixed breed dogs with varying opinions. I know the importance of having good genetics and parents that hunt and what not, but i have also heard a lot of people who claim to have mixed breeds that hunt with the best of them.

My pup is 12 weeks old now and he is getting big fast. He has great webbing on his big ol paws. He is a relatively calm dog, but he does like to run around and play with my room mates mastiff. He is really brave, punching well above his class against his 100 lb friend, and does not seem to get tired easily. He fetches his toys a little bit, but more prefers to chase them around. HOWEVER, I have a half dozen clipped mallard wings that I had laying around from my last hunt, and when I whip them across the yard he goes and retrieves them for me, and brings them to hand about 80% of the time. the other 20% he will get distracted by a neighbors car door or something, or want to go inside (assuming because of the cold). It is very encouraging that he retrieves the wings for me (and does so repeatedly) but he does not have insane amounts of drive or anything (I dont even know if i should notice a ton of drive yet though). He is a fairly calm dog but he bounds happily to the wing on each throw. Oh, and he watched a flock of passing geese in the sky yesterday. That made me happy.

I get waves of worry when he chooses to not get the wing, or to touch it and run a little bit more, but then he brings it to hand and nixes those fears. So i am in a constant wave of how to feel about my new friend. The fact that he is border collie gives him some added intelligence, so I am hoping that this will turn into ability to hunt, but I am not sure if intelligence will trump drive. He seems to want to make me happy, and im sure that will grow as i have only had him for 2 weeks.

I was just wondering if anyone had any tips for trying to begin a dogs training in the winter, and if there are any additional steps i should take with a lab-mix. Or if anyone has any positive mix breed stories to boost my confidence in him. I love the guy, and i really really want him to become my duck dog. So with that, here is my pup vader the day after i got him.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Training my Borador