Can't cope with dog!!

[tonneofbricks]

Nearly one year old, the dog follows me everywhere. Paces around the house constantly and is driving me insane. DH got the dog and seems like mostly up to me to look after as I work from home. Dog gets walked twice a day and we literally don't have time for anymore as I am flat out with work, home and children. Don't know what to do I feel like rehoming.

I work from home and mine gets ignored until I have 5 minutes and then we have a play and then he gets ignored again.

What are his walks like? Are they onlead or offlead and for how long? What breed is he? Have you looked at mental stimulation so stuffed kongs and other slow feeders to keep him entertained.

Get your DH to do more things either with the children or with the dog. You need to be sharing the workload.

Have you done any training with the dog? I feel that it helps you bond with them and also tires them out. At his age you could look for flyball, agility or general obedience.

We have been doing quite well with training. DDog has two walks on lead during week and extra offlead at weekend. We also have a big garden and DDog has access to outside all day. Dog seems to want constant attention and I am finding it very irritating. It's a spaniel. I'm not really a dog person, more so DH, or do I was told.

I have a cocker spaniel and on lead walks really don't tire him out as much as off lead walks when he can run about and chase and fetch balls. The thing is having access to the garden isn't very interesting to him hence wanting human interaction.

Options are to provide more stimulation, off lead walks, play intervals through the day, mental stimulation games or hire a dog walker or send him to daycare a few days a week which will give you a break when working at home and the dog more things to do.

Also, he may well calm down as he gets older - our boy was nuts when we first adopted him at 11 months but is definitely a lot calmer now he is coming up to 3 years old.

There's a page on Facebook called canine enrichment. Lots of good ideas to amuse and mentally tire a dog, and not all require your attention. For example don't feed kibble in a bowl, make a home made snuffle mat and put each meal in it.

The rest of the family need to step up though.

Dogs like company. But the neediness can be draining if you have a real limpet. Your dog definitely needs more mental stimulation and you could do with finding a way to enjoy it's company more.
But saying all that, if you really can't give the dog what it needs, have a serious think about rehousing. It's a young dog so has a good chance. Did you buy from a breeder? Would they help with rehoming?

My little spaniel is mega needy. He comes to work with me luckily so between 12 of us we can give him the attention he’s after. So it sounds like you’re trying to do what I need 12 people for he sleeps all evening though thank god.

As Bitey said, Kongs are a life saver especially if it’s filled with something that takes them ages to eat. I know people do frozen stock and that can distract them for hours. I also got a rubber puzzle feeding mat from amazon which is successful. A fabric one I got much less so. If he was in another room from you and radio/TV was on would that distract him?

Oh and if you have affordable daycare options near you then a day a week there would probably help tons. I get 2-3 days of super tired dog after one day of playing with all the other dogs in daycare, so definitely £18 well spent

I think an off lead walk would really help, mine has 30 mins at lunch and he sleeps all afternoon. There is a big change around a year I found, he became much more independent to the extent that if I'm home in the morning (normally I'm at work) or we have builders in he ignores completely in favour of sleeping until the time I normally come home!

I have a springer spaniel, and while I know many spaniels are much smaller and don't need as much exercise, mine would not cope with only on-lead walks.
I walk him for over an hour in the morning, an hour of that off lead, and he is running for most of that. Dh usually takes him out for half an hour in the evening, again, off lead, and running if he wants.

Then he settles down and sleeps a lot during the day. He does like to be in the same room as me though, so I have a blanket/cushion in each. If I move rooms, even if I think he is asleep, he gets up comes to his bed in the room I;m in and goes back to sleep!

We also noticed he was getting a bit naughty, and I realised that I had been busy and had done the same walk with him for about 2 weeks on the trot. I did different walks for a week, and he calmed down again. They do get bored!

I go to dog agility with my dog. Have only had a couple of lessons so far, but was talking to the trainer today and she was saying dogs need mental stimulation as much as physical stimulation. In fact some days she doesn't walk her dogs, but just does a training day with them. So probably a bit of agility but also games etc. Sometimes she won't put the dog food in their bowls but make the dogs work to find their food, using for example a snuffle mat, as mentioned above.

She did say, you can also over walk a dog as a walk very rarely completely tires out a dog, so you end up just trying to walk more to tire them out.

Brain games are the only thing that tires out my beagle. He has to work for all his food - either through simple things like lick-e mats or snuffle mats (which is how we feed him) or games like treasure hunt (finding food in piles of leaves).

He also gets a frozen buffalo horn most days which takes him about 45 minutes to an hour, and that contains half of one of his meals. So we wash it each morning and stuff it with a mixture of the following (not all at once!)- wet food, kibble, pate, cheese, fish, bits of ham, vegetables, peanut butter and apples. He loves it and the work he has to do to eat him exhausts him as well.

The other thing we do is daily training - either going over old tricks or teaching him new ones. He's recently learnt things like jumping through hoops and weaving through cones, so now he's mastered that, we're going to try and increase the difficulty each week so he can build on what he already knows as time goes on.

She did say, you can also over walk a dog as a walk very rarely completely tires out a dog, so you end up just trying to walk more to tire them out.

I can really see that, it isn't the amount of exercise, but also new and interesting smells etc. If the walk is mentally stimulating ,it is much more tiring.

But OP, I can see that if this isn't really your dog, ie dh wanted him, and you are already busy, adding any of that feels like a massive chore.

I think your dh needs to step up and do some brain training with your dog each evening.

So your DH got the dog and has handed it over to you to look after? Does he think working from home equals sitting on your bum all day doing not very much.

You problem seem to me is not the neediness of the dog but the laziness of your DH in not participating in the care and training of the animal he chose to bring in to the home.

He needs to be told that he has to do his share.

Did you actually agree to having this dog before he got it? Your OP makes it sound like it was his decision rather than a joint agreement.

Spaniels are intense dogs. Have your tried toys like kongs/treat dispensers to keep him busy? Is your husband doing his share of the walks?

Your pup must be going stir crazy with only on lead walks - it is not enough for him. I have a young spaniel and he has on lead training, fetch/scent work and a good long off lead run every day or he would be nutty. Mental stimulation exhausts him.
A young spaniel like yours would find a home quickly if you decided to rehome. Or your husband needs to step up because the current situation is not fair on the pup.
One word though - spaniels are absolutely devoted to their chosen person and will always want to be by your side. I love that about them but if you are not a dog person at all then I can see how it might be annoying for you and confusing for the dog.

It would probably be better to swap two on lead walks for one interesting off lead one, in my opinion anyway. We took our Lab for a fairly short off lead walk this morning but there were trees and berry bushes to sniff, varied textures to walk on and a stream to paddling in. Her head was down the whole time sniffing and investigating. She's crashed out in a sunny spot by the window now even though it was probably only half an hour of walking. We'll do a short fetch session before the school run later and that does her fine.
We do short training sessions throughout the day which tires her out mentally too, then add in Kongs, frozen carrots, etc. and we have happy tired pup!

On my lord this is my exact life right now, and he refuses to rehome so we pay a walker for once daily walk but still not enuf for puppys energy

I have seen some people use a small ball pool, like you have for a toddler. You put their kibble in it (obviously no good if you use wet food) together with the balls, and they have to work for their dinner by finding the kibble. That should tire a dog out