Well I almost had a heart attack yesterday when our 2 year old yellow Lab, Bella, got loose and ran into traffic in front of my eyes. The situation was this:

We don't have a fenced yard unfortunately so to give Bella time outside (other than walks) we have a very long tie out cable in the front yard. I take her out, tie her up and sit on our front porch with a coffee and a book while she plays. I used to put her on her lead, take her out and then transfer her to the cable but over the past few months, as she's finally matured, I've been able to simply take her out to the cable holding her by her collar. She's been very good for me about that.

Yesterday, for no apparent reason (no dogs nearby or squirrels or whatever), as soon as I opened the door she yanked hard, almost pulled me over and got loose. She ran right into traffic which was quite busy at the time. I have no idea how she managed to not get run over other than good drivers who braked fast. I had to run and wake up my husband, who works nights, to help me get her back.

Bella is the 3rd Lab I've owned and I was raised with lots of dogs. She's the first one that I've met though that is this plain bullheaded and just stupid about stuff. She was raised in the city so I'm just baffled at how she can have absolutely no car sense at all. She also is VERY resistant to learning to come when called. It's funny because she will do almost anything else you tell her and is quite smart about understanding human language. When it comes to the "come" command though (and to getting her nails trimmed) it's a flat out struggle. In this case it almost got her killed in front of my very eyes.

Is there a training method anyone knows to teach a very thickheaded dog that running into the road will get you killed? I can't teach her to completely avoid the road since we have to cross it when we go for walks.

I had a vet tell me years ago that if you were going to get a "difficult" Labrador it was almost always a yellow one. I think I get that now as my previous Labs, both blacks, were much easier dogs to train.