We have a cocker spaniel who is almost 2. He's always been the softest, daftest boy. Has never bitten, resource guarded or even so much as growled. I work FT out of the house and dp works PT in the house so during the week, for 3 days, a walker takes him out. On the other weekdays dp walks him and I walk him on the weekend.
On the weekend, I do one walk just me and him and the other walks with a friend who has a large breed dog. They get on really well and take turns running after the ball and ours will actually voluntarily give the other dog the ball so it gives him the opportunity to chase her etc. We are in a busy area and meet loads of dogs and never once have I seen an issue with our dog and another one.
The walker has started complaining recently that he is being too dominant. He wasn't neutered so we chose to get the implant and that has shrunk his balls to nothing. We didn't notice a change in his behaviour other than he has stopped marking/weeing as much when out. She immediately said the implant wouldn't work, she'd tried it with one of her dogs and the only answer was neutering but we didn't want him to have the op when we weren't sure this was the problem.
She's now come back to us to say she doesn't want to walk him any more unless we neuter him as he's too much of a problem with other dogs. That he pins them down and tries to bite them. The problem is that we haven't ever seen this behaviour. We went to the vet who at first didn't believe us (they have looked after him since we got him and know his character) and then said they didn't believe that neutering was the answer and maybe the walker wasn't 'managing' the dogs properly as they found it hard to believe that he was like this.
I really like these walkers and they've walked him for a long time and walk loads of spaniels so tend to get the mad spaniel thing but I'm not sure what to do next. I know an option is changing the walker but if he really is like this, it won't solve the problem. What would you do next?