Josh, the one thing that experience via training eight retrievers has taught me is that there is no formulaic approach to training a labrador retriever. Each dog has their own personality and inherent rate of comprehension and progression. Five of our labradors have been from English/Irish stock dogs, two were from Wildrose- good dogs, but neither proved to be sound from a health standpoint. One was a very good retreiver. One was average. The two I own right now came from a breeder who focuses on producing sound dogs with good conformation characteristcs of the breed. Generations of function as retreivers is deeply imbedded in most quality breeding programs. The one thing I can state with conviction regarding British labs., they have impressive behavioral retention capability. It is easy to condition-in traits that are not conducive to hunting capability, so be mindful of who is training the dog within you houshold and make sure everyone is on the same page in terms of standardizing commands, voice, hand signals and whistle. Come is a one-word command, not a run-on sentence of superlatives. Once I get a pup responding to hand signals and whistle commands consistently those become the bulk of command conditioning. A Whistle never gives away your frustration or anger. ANY time the dog is not obeying you, stop and ask yourself: What am I doing wrong in conveying what I want the dog to do? They have an amazing ability to read your body language and remember what various voice tones convey. hand signals and the whistle are ALWAYS neutral. I have never met a dog who could reason, but I have owned several who could learn an amazing array of skills.
My youngest dog is the near genetic clone of his brother, yet, he responds only to positive reinforcement best. Once I finally figured that out, whenever he did not grasp a training task or command, I NEVER scolded him. For him, silence was enough because he was so focused on achieving praise. Karen commented once that she was convinced he would run through a wall to be told he was good....she wasn't far off. He is a jumper, consequently we had to teach him to not jump over the child gates we have in the house unless he is commanded to do so, which is actually beneficial in keeping him from jumping a fence when I have no knowledge of what is on the other side.