Hello all. This is my first post ever, so please bear with me. I have a 7 (almost 8) month old male chocolate lab. He is crate trained. He knows many commands (sit, lay down, shake, come and many more) and usually listens to my husband or me when we give them. But for the past couple of months, he has been totally ignoring both of us. We give him a command and he will look at us and then do something else! When we say "Come" he stares at us and then turns around and walks the opposite way. The tone we use is a friendly tone. (Not the "bad dog" tone) We haven't gotten any new pets, nor have we had a baby. He is my baby and gets attention and love ALL the time! We have two older cats that were here when we brought him home. I haven't any idea what could've sparked this sudden rebellion in him. My mother says that animals are affected my full moon and 7-29-2007 is the day for it. ANY advice is welcome because I am at my wits end!

how frustrating,

our dearly loved labs can be notoriously naughty children, they, for a lazy docile grown up dog, can be very full on as a puppy.

Similar thing happened to us with our boy (although not a lab) we ended up actually going right back to scratch with training etc, treated him like he was 8 weeks old again and treated him as though he knew nothing again. This process did not take long, because he did really know what he was doing, but it forced a refocus back on us and reinforced that there is higher reward for keeping his focus on us and working with us not against. We even, at puppy school intentionally skipped an assessment to keep kato in the lower grade for a bit longer just to reinforce to him that he was back at basics.

This may take up some time for you but will sure beat getting frustrated and if you leave it too long, you could very well allow enough time for bad habits to set in and take over.

I really would encourage you to consider going back to the start and begin training again. Doing it all on lead so you have complete contol, once your boy start behaving again, slowly allow more freedom by giving him longer lead, this will also alow you to practice medium distance recall, but still have control of your dog and allow you to correct him.

Good luck with it all,
Try not to get to frustrated or anxious, your dog will pick up on it and respond negatively to what you are trying to do, and dont give up. Many dogs at this age go thru a patch of complete annoyance.......not dissimilar to the terrible twos in our human kids. See it through, i promise there is a light at the end of the tunnel if you do.