My Labrador Retriever Pick

Before we begin our basic training sections I would like to explain my chose of Chisum. For those of you that do not know about Chisum, He was a yellow male Labrador retriever that Arlene and I kept from our last litter. I chose Chisum for several reasons and I will list them in a few minutes. We bred http://www.sunsetlabradors.com/rock.html  X http://www.sunsetlabradors.com/becky.html and I had thought that this would be an exceptional litter four several reasons. Rock is a powerful black male that has a burning desire to please you, he loves to retrieve and his entire personality just melts you. Becky is a beautifully marked female. She is high strung and has no fear in her at all. She is the most dominate of all our labs. The combination of the 2 should and did produce a wonderful litter.  

Many years ago I had a yellow male Labrador retriever named Sunny, he was a puppy I kept from a litter I had back in 1982. Sunny was a powerful Labrador retriever and was the second lab I trained. As a puppy he was wild, obnoxious and very hard to train. We had many, many, many frustrating training seasons. To make this story short I eventual used an e-collar, (Electronic Collar). Many refer to the e-collar as a shock collar. The end result was Sunny became the best well mannered hunting Labrador retriever I ever had. Our “Rock” is about the nearest I have come to another Sunny and breeding Rock to Becky I felt the 2 personalities would complement one and other. I also was looking for a yellow male. 

The reasons why I chose this particular yellow male over the other males in the litter are:

• He is a yellow male.
• He was the brut of the litter.
• He was not the best marked but he has nice markings.
• I guess he basically reminded me of Sunny.
• I felt this was going to be challenging.
• I also probably will end up using an e-collar in the future and will be able to add this to our training lessons in the future.
• With all this in mind, I am possibly thinking about field trials. 

I explained in a previous post why I named him “Chisum” http://www.sunsets-labradorretrievertraining.com/2010/01/why-chisum/. In our next post we will begin our basic training lessons which I like to call Kindergarten Training. Our main topic will be setting the right environment for your labrador puppy.