My lovely 4 yr old Springer is driving us INSANE at the moment and I need ideas on how to help him.
He appears to love playing fetch with balls especially, but when the game is over he wants to carry on to the extent he will find any ball shaped object and bring it to anyone he thinks will play, often visitors to the house. He sat whimpering in front of a ball shaped rock next to the guy who came to paint our outside railings. For two days! And the guy didn't even acknowledge him once!
The approach we take is to ignore the behaviour and we have stopped playing these games at home as he just can't help himself and seems to get quite stressed by it, even though he loves to play. Just looking for ideas to try to control this behaviour. In other respects he is a good boy, knows all the basic commands and has excellent recall, he just can't seem to control himself if there is a ball around! And it's a shame to have to stop playing.