Am sat at a bus stop on way home from school trying not to cry.
18 week old Springer and she is just impossible.
I spent hundreds on 121 training lessons from 8 weeks and she just won t walk nicely.
He paws are literally scraped raw in places.
She pulls so much she is gasping for air from her collar choking her.
Does anyone have any techniques?
She's a lovely dog but the biting, pulling and toilet training are getting nowhere and I'm fed up tbh
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The doghouse
Springer puppy pulling on lead till paws sore :(
44 replies
SpringerWoes · 12/11/2018 08:59
OP posts:
missbattenburg ·
12/11/2018 09:27
She is a baby. I would be amazed if a springer this age was anything but a pain in the arse 
. The bad news is, she is likely to be so for several months yet. Your springer is not going to be properly mature until about 2 years old.
Battendog is a springer who is 15 months old. He:
- walks ok on the lead in environments that are not overly exciting. As soon as he sees another dog, gets another smell or spots something he wants to investigate his first reaction is to try and drag me over to it.
- didn't stop biting until about 9 months old.
- wasn't reliable at toilet training until about 5 or 6 months
Springers take while to mature!
I would get her on a harness to stop her hurting her neck. Use the harness any time you are not actively training her to walk nicely.
I'd also find a decent trainer. Honestly, anyone worth their salt would not have allowed you to spend hundreds without giving you a way to work on this.
I personally use a combination of stopping dead anytime battendog pulls on the lead (think of the lead like a brake, he pulls, it stops me). I only start moving again once the dog has slacked the lead, and they will do so eventually - even if it takes 10 mins of you stood like a statue. This is why you need to be clear when you are actively training, because the first hundred walks are going to be slooooow :).
In the early days I would also use a treat to lure him back to where I wanted him to be (by my side) and still use treats to reward him when he is there.
We have been doing this twice a day, every day for six months and I expect to need to do it for at least another year, with small improvements as we go. Loose lead waking (for some dogs) is a long haul.
I also found that Battendog learned much better when the lesson was fun and exciting. For loose lead walking this meant that when we are walking along I try to make being with me as interesting as possible. We stop to sniff things, I change direction often, I sometimes speed up a bit, I often reward and I praise liberally.
If I took him to classes where he just had to repeat the same exercise over and over he lost focus and was a pain. I took him to agility where the work is exciting, fast paced and different all the time and he shone like a genius.
Work WITH the dog. Think about all the things she is designed to do and understand that she cannot resist doing them. She is designed to run and flush and sniff. She is designed to be absolutely focussed on those activities and to never give up until she has the bird. She is designed to bond closely with one person and want to roam the fields with them. Think about ways you can do versions of those things with her.
She will need plenty of mental (and limited physical) stimulation. At her age Battendog was almost a full time job! I would expect a springer that age to need 2 or 3 short walks a day, along with about the same number of training sessions, lasting about 10 mins plus one or two good play sessions. Something like that.
SpringerWoes ·
12/11/2018 10:35
I ordered it already 
Its got good reviews so it may help.
OP posts:
Vallahalagonebutnotforgotten ·
12/11/2018 15:49
He is not testing the boundaries dogs walk faster than us - so do the math - they will be ahead of us and will pull!
Spaniels walk faster than anything on earth so it appear they pull more - they just walk faster
Head collars may prevent pulling for some dogs but they will not train a dog not to pull - they can cause neck injuries, back injuries so I would avoid them if possible. However there are occasions when the risk can be measured against the situation eg elderly owner walking large pulling dog.
With a puppy I would try to train the behaviour before giving in to using a headcollar.
BiteyShark ·
12/11/2018 16:37
Spaniels put their noses down and zig zag about the place because that's how they hunt. Pulling isn't just the problem with spaniels it's the fact that they try and trip you up as well
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LittleBLUEsmurfHouse ·
12/11/2018 19:44
A harness is just giving her something to lean into and pull more.
Depends on the dog.
My cocker pulls like a train in a harness but on a collar walks on a beautiful loose lead and has done since day one (he is so food motivated it's beyond belief though, so all I did to "train" loose lead walking on a collar was keep giving him food as we walked along - somehow it didn't work for harness though 
).
On the other hand my cavalier pulled and yanked so much on a collar that he made me pull a muscle in my back/shoulder, I put him in a perfect fit harness and he quickly gave up trying to pull.
Squirrel26 ·
12/11/2018 20:07
I have soo many harnesses .
I’ve been there with the crying in despair at my horrible dog yanking me all over the place. It’s the sudden lurching I really can’t stand - it’s so uncomfortable.
The best solution for us so far is a perfect fit harness with the lead on the front D-ring and a waist belt (for me!) He finds the outside world so exciting it’s taken him a year and a half to even realise that I’m there on the end of the lead. 
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