We have a 19 week old border collie puppy. He is generally good, the only issue we have is he jumps up at the children and pulls on their clothes. We decided to get a dog trainer in to help us with this. They came round for the first time last night. Now the puppy is normally really good with the children, he has never bitten anybody, he plays with my dd (6) and is gentle, every morning he gets so excited to see her and greets her with face licking and tongue wagging. He will happily just lay across her and sleep.
Yesterday the trainer gave her a bowl of food to hold, puppy saw this and jumped up to get it, the trainer pulled the food away when the puppy had his face in the bowl, he followed the food and caught my dds hand with his teeth in the process. Now she isn't badly hurt or anything just a couple of small scratches and it wasn't a purposeful bite. The trainer then dragged my puppy away by the collar causing it to growl. Later on she asked my daughter to stand and call him to her, the puppy tried to run to her but the trainer had him by a lead so he couldn't get anywhere. He then started to get frustrated and was kind of growling but more in a frustrated way (somewhere between a growl and a whine).
The trainer has now told us we can't have the kids and the puppy together when the puppy has food, that the puppy shouldn't be fed from a bowl and they are concerned about his aggression towards the children.
The thing is he isn't normally at all aggressive, he has never growled before, the kids have hand fed him from the day we got him and he has never bitten them. After they left last night and the puppy had calmed down the first thing he did was go and sit next to my dd and fall asleep.
I suffer terribly from anxiety and have hardly slept all night worrying about what I have done wrong. The trainer went on about how he was aggressive and might need a muzzle but he has never growled or bitten anyone before last night. He loves getting attention from people, he is very excitable whenever he sees people and he is very good with other dogs. In the hour the trainer was there he growled twice, once when she pulled him by the collar and once when our cat came up behind him when she was giving him treats, but when he realised it was the cat he stopped growling and ignored it.
The image they have given is totally the opposite of the reality of day to day with him. I don't know what to do, my dd loves interacting with him and to be told they shouldn't do it really upset her last night. I will point out we never leave them alone at all.