Hi,
I already have this running in the doghouse, but thought I'd post here too for traffic.
We have a 2 year old spaniel x lab.
Firstly, this is a problem we thought we'd cracked, but seems to have slipped again.
I used to put it down to boredom. For example, if it's raining and she's not had a long enough run, but there's not always correlation between the amount of exercise
she's had and her mood in the evenings.
She's very clever and can pick up tricks very quickly. We do try to keep her occupied in the evening with treat balls, kongs filled with cheese (not both at the same time) and playing fetch, but she still jumps on our other sofa and tries to frantically dig down and when we tell her no, she'll start growling at us and will sometimes snap. Also, when we're just sitting watching TV, she'll start barking at us and whereas I know she just wants our attention, it can very quickly turn to her jumping up and snapping.
I have tried:
Ignoring her completely, but she would bark INDEFINITELY and my ears really hurt and crackle when she does this.
Leaving the room, which works the first couple of times, but like everything else, now doesn't work and she will continue to bark at me when I come back in and nibble at my hands.
Disciplined with shouting and putting her in the kitchen. I know that one's controversial, but sometimes I'm at the end of my tether and it can get to the stage where I feel I just need to protect us. I hate grabbing her collar to move her, but when she's in that frame of mind, she won't obey if I just told her to go to her bed. Actually, thinking about it, she never goes to her bed when I tell her to. I had a dog before (another lab X) and all you needed to say was "in there" and she'd take herself to the kitchen.
I know all dogs aren't the same, but I really don't know what else to do. She's even drawn blood a couple of times and it's really upsetting, because I know the outcome of she did that to someone else and I can't bear it.
Please help.
TIA