In tears over spaniel - please help

[Herewegoagainffs]

I am at the end of my tether. We have a 6 year old working cocker. He’s wonderful in so many ways and we love him. We have 3 small children he is fabulous with but…

HE IS SO EXHAUSTING IN THE GARDEN. All he does is bring object after object over to us to throw for him. It’s boiling so we have the doors open and then he brings them in the house. He has popped over 100 ball pit balls. He brings pine cones, rocks, clumps of mud.

NOTHING WORKS. We have tried ignoring him/ we have tried sending him inside. We have tried throwing a ball for varying amounts of time. Nothing helps. He is walked for several hours a day. He gets plenty of attention and stimulation. It’s driving me to distraction and I am at my wit’s end I just want to enjoy my garden and not be constantly harassed.

we sent him every summer to a gundog trainer for a month as he shoots in the autumn and last summer the gundog trainer said he just refused to retrieve properly and he was thrown off a shoot with my husband. He’s just lost the plot I don’t even know what to say anymore we have spent thousands on training, hours and hours of training at home and exercising him etc and I don’t know what we can do.

all ideas welcome please!

just to say we tried a ball launcher for him too and all he did was bark at it.

How much exercise does he get? Do have 'brain training' games?

He gets 90 mins a day of walking.

for the last 3 months he was going to the dog Walker and getting 4 hours of walks a day and it didn’t make a difference whatsoever to his behaviour. Now he’s back having 90 mins with us a day.

he does do some brain training (hiding treats for him to find and his gundog exercises) but even then it jsut seems to wind him up - he’s so so so well behaved out on a walk, heels beautifully, sits on command etc but in the garden he’s a total menace and fully ignores us.

It sounds like he’d be better off in a working home. You train him to do a job, but him doing that job at home is a pain

@KangarooKenny

Plenty of people have working dogs and it’s never an issue - I don’t know what I’ve done or how I’ve failed him but we tried to make sure he has outlet for working with the shoots during the season. But then as I say last season he was a total idiot with a partridge and got thrown off a shoot! The gundog trainer says he’s realised he only wants to retrieve as a game and not even do it properly eg on a shoot as that requires waiting and discipline.

this is all so miserable. I resent him
because he is causing me so much stress every single day but I am sad because I don’t know how to help him. I can’t see what options I have left to try, and I have 3 children so I don’t know how much more time I can reasonably dedicate to this dog.

Our patterdale x is similar , but older now so less annoying . Ignoring is the only thing that works , it’s just annoying whilst he gets that I’m not playing . Have you got a digging pit in the garden as that may be worth a try and you could start him off by hiding some things in it . We also don’t have balls in the house / garden that he can just pick up he has to wait for us to fetch one and then it gets put away straight after play otherwise he keeps bothering us .

@Floralnomad

that makes me feel a lot better, thank you.

woild yours also bring you non balls?

A fine example of the principle that intermittent reward schedules are the most persistant

Let me break that down for you:

• when a dog does something that SOMETIMES works to get them what they want, they will persist with that behaviour for longer after it stops working than if it had ALWAYS worked up that point

It's the gambling effect. If bringing you something occasionally works, it is always worth one more try to see if it will work.

If I am reading you right, you have an other wise perfect dog except for the garden behaviour and the garden behaviour is specifically the obsession with bringing you things to throw?

Extinction will work. When it sops getting him what he wants, he will eventually stop doing it. That's just behavioural law .

The challenge you have is...

a) it might take longer than your patience
b) he has a long history of it working, sometimes (as above)
c) he is likely to get worse before he gets better (an extinction burst in which he will exaggerate the behaviour for a while before he gives it up)

So, I think I would be looking to take this clever dog and teach him that bringing me anything at all results in something other than a throw.

For this summer I'd put a baby gate over the open door (like the ones you can get to protect fireplaces etc) so that he does not have free access.

I would limit any throwing at all to walks only. No one throws anything for the dog in the garden from now on AT ALL. He needs to reassess what a garden is for.

If he is reasonable about food, I would feed in the garden, to encourage calmer behaviour whilst in that location. Even if it means shutting the door so he cannot just bring stuff inside instead of eating. I would also hide treats in the garden (again, assuming he is ok with food) to encourage sniffing as a garden activity.

I would get a container with a lid and every time he brought me something, I would swap it for something he likes but is not as valuabe as a throw (e.g. a small treat) and place it in the basket and empty it when he's not looking. No high praise, just a calm swap out.

I would also hide all toys when not being played with by the children. I understand he brings you more than toys, but I would not leave them lying about begging to be retrieved.

Op Years ago we had a dog like this. If we went for a walk all he wanted to do was to fetch sticks for me to throw. He would get tired out and lay down in streams and pant and then do it all again. If you did not throw a stick he would find anything and drop it at your feet and then if you walked past it would pick it up and drop it again until you joined in the game.
You just had to ignore.
At first he would circle round me as if I was prey if I would not join in with the game but eventually he got the message that if I did not want to do it anymore he was wasting his time trying.
It was tedious at first but eventually he learned although he still wanted to play the game given half a chance.
Ignore.

The above advice is excellent

I would also not give him unlimited access outside, but put him in, say, your bedroom for an hour every now or then.

saying that, I have a different dog breed who would then just rest/sleep. Not sure this would work for a spaniel?

Sorry, you sound at the end of your tether. My springer was like this when he was adolescent!

Hide the balls (including the ball pit balls) - put them out of sight and somewhere he can't get to them. To be fair to him, a ball pit full of his favourite objects in the world is probably totally over stimulating.

When you walk him, don't take a ball. Make him go off and sniff instead. This is a tip I got from this board and I never thought my springer would enjoy a walk without a ball, but he does - and it seems to wear him out and stimulate him in a totally different way from chasing tennis balls.

Basically I've realised that much as ddog LOVES balls, they also stress him out slightly - his response to them is a bit obsessive compulsive and he becomes quite frantic. He has to be persuaded to do something else, but he seems happy enough once he's realised balls aren't an option in that context, and he seems more ready to flop down/stop nagging.

To be honest the only thing that I can think of that would works is completely, completely ignore the behaviour and never thrown anything for him and never acknowledge what he brings you. Problem is when working he needs to do it! Can you send him for a longer stint at the trainer?!? I'd send him to boot camp for a few months tbh. He won't be able to exhibit it in kennels and he would be focussing on working.

@SirSniffsAlot

thank you!!!!!! For all of that!!!! Makes such a big difference to feel like someone else understands and it’s not that I’m a terrible owner.

with the stairgate the problem is that he will just bark and bark and bark forever.

you are right that we have shown him sometimes we give in; and that’s the problem (not placing blame - I am, a bit - but often my husband just kicks or throws a pinecone or something and I want to throttle him for it).

Oh I'd get rid of balls completely. I had to with my springer.

@Bunty55
thank you !!!!

You have a working breed which needs mental stimulation as much as, if not more than, physical exercise. Does your husband do gundog training between the residential time with a trainer? I would never recommend sending a dog away for training as 99% of the time the handler needs training as much as the dog.
Have you ever taught the dog yo settle and be quiet between walks? This is essential with high energy breeds. Giving them more exercise will only result in the dog getting fitter, not tired.
We have a WCS with a total red pedigree, at 15 months old she gets 35min walk AM and 40 min at lunchtime. She has been taught to settle and chill between walks but each walk contains elements of gundog training and we go for lessons every Sunday.
These dogs can also easily become obsessed with certain actions/objects if they are not sufficiently mentally stimulated. Easily trained but this means they pick up bad habits as easily as good ones.
The advice from @SirSniffsAlot is good but I would also find a qualified gundog trainer local to you for more regular ie weekly training.
If you can't commit more time to training then maybe the best thing for the dog would be rehoming.

It’s just hard because he will take items from anywhere. He literally pulls soft toys through the children’s playpen. I am happy to put the ball pit away but as I say he will then just bring literally any other item he can find. I will just keep ignoring - I do feel a million times better that other people have had this problem; thank you

if we shut him inside whilst we are outsidehe will just bark for hours and piss off the neighbours.

Wow @SirSniffsAlot that's fantastic advice and will help me with my spaniel too - thank you!

Totally get what you mean about other objects, DDog does this too. But this might be about improving what you can in increments rather than one Big Bang solution unfortunately!

Just remembered the other thing I do now on walks is deliberately throw the ball into thick undergrowth or long grass (not ideal in tick season) and tell him to go find it. He can be searching for minutes at a time over quite a large area but always (almost always...) sniffs it out in the end and seems to find it really rewarding. Definitely more challenging/stimulating than simple catch-and-retrieve and again seems to really wear him out - not physically (seems impossible to wear him out physically!) but mentally

I agree that Sirsniffsalot theory is correct but unfortunately in real life extinction is incredibly hard to do. For the very reason she states that variable reinforcement is very powerful.

eg for 6 months you never ever ever throw one of the items he brings to you. then once just once someone does throw the item for your dog - yay variable reinforcement at its strongest. It paid off and your dog will carry on bringing you more and more items as you do sometimes throw them.

Change the behaviour in the gardent to hunting or sniffing but mainly being calm. Teach some boundary training and work on it in the garden. The one joy of working dogs is that they can and should do calm and settle (they would out and about on a hunt) so develop this skill in your dog.

@twistyizzy

he has gone to the trainer for 4-6 weeks every year for 4 years, plus he has been shooting for 4 weekends a year every season for 4 years. To be quite honest, we did use to do the training with him between; but no we don’t really have the time now. I did sort of think (and I grew up with 3 dogs) that once they were trained you didn’t need to keep reinforcing the behaviour. I see what you’re saying but I’m not sure it’s reasonable to rehome an otherwise very happy and settled dog - I do think I dedicate a reasonable amount of time to him and I can’t really spend any more!

@Ivedonethisthreetimealready

You are so right! It’s also very hard as we have such young children and of course from time to time they also throw things

@PacificState
i love that idea, thank you

Advice on how to get the dog to settle between walks highly appreciated please

Thank you for all the solidarity

Fair play on the barking.

You have to work with the dog you have, not a hypothetical one I've dreamt up

I'd imagined you using the gate when you were IN the house but had the door open. To prevent him buggering orf into the garden and finding something whenever he fancies.

By all mans take him out into the garden with you - but NO throwing or kicking pine cones with your feet DH! Sniffy games only.

I once know a GSD/collie cross who did similar: he would bring the tiniest piece of twig, just an inch long, and drop it at your feet repeatedly until you threw it. A combo of the tactics above worked but I know it took a few months of consistency...