@Elli123 I have a 19-month-old working cocker and WFH with her and her day looks like this – (apols for length but hope it’s helpful)
8-9am ish, get up, maybe come back to bed with me depending on how quickly we need to be out/if I need to do some work first.
9-11 ish – walk: always offlead, mostly training walk or a kind of purposeful walk: finding pheasants/partridges and flushing and stopping on them. I always take her to gamey areas to practice and we do a lot of gundog skills – some retrieves, but mostly sitting around doing nothing in the middle of a field, marking birds, and hunting for balls/rabbit balls/cold game/partridge wings etc. Sometimes on the morning walk we’ll meet up with dog friends and have a more feral run around and she’ll play with a ball a bit but on the whole I don’t use balls for throwing, only for finding. As others above have said about their dogs she can get a bit overhyped on too much ball throwing and it is clear that it does absolutely nothing for her mental health. I only ever take a ball out with me for useful purposes – for finding or chucking a reward retrieve out. The morning walk isn’t always two hours but I always allow up to two hours in case we bump into someone chatty/drive somewhere. This morning it was 65 mins, yesterday 85 mins. Always at least an hour as it helps me to start my day properly.
10.30/11ish – back home, she eats, I eat, I start work properly, she sleeps/chills. If I have a call I tend to go upstairs to let her sleep in peace, sometimes I’ll do the food shop in the morning for the same reason. She isn’t crated and never has been so has the run of the house when I’m in and the kitchen/snug if I’m not.
Roughly lunchtime ish, maybe 1-2 ish – she gets up for a wee and wants to ‘go and do something’ so we go into the garden and do some skills. Maybe some whistle work, or sitting doing nothing in the middle of the garden, some finding, more hunting, a few very short retrieves, or if we’re lucky a pheasant will pop in and she can practice sitting quietly while it walks around. Or we just chill out and walk around the garden checking the borders/fences/I might go and do the bins and she helps me etc.
After lunch (small piece of cheese/leftover tuna etc for her) she goes back to sleep. She might potter about a bit with her toys or chewing one of the many, many bones she’s abandoned. She’ll come and tap me on the leg from time to time at the table and ask for a fuss which she either gets or I’ll tell her to go back to bed. Perhaps a wee break or two but just wee and back inside.
Then about 5.30/6, depending on my schedule and her sleep schedule as sometimes she’s still sparko at 6.30, we go out for a second walk. If it’s an onlead walk it’s usually 40/50 minutes, practicing loose lead walking and heel work, but it is mainly a sniff opportunity. I let her stop at every single sniff. We avoid other dogs if possible and do a lot of pavement manners and road manners. If offlead usually about 45-60 mins doing something similar to the morning – a purposeful run around and sniff, but more relaxed, not least as it’s dark this time of year. In the summer her evening walks are much more fun and we will often go swimming.
Get back, she eats, I eat, and then we do our evening routine – I get changed, tidy up a bit and she helps, she has a wee/sniff outside, and then she’s keen to get into my jumper/on the sofa with me and my laptop to watch tv/stare at Mumsnet/do emails/do more work/talk on the phone etc until about 11/11.30pm when she has her last wee and goes to bed in the kitchen/snug and I go upstairs.
Weekends are more active with longer walks and trips out and seeing people etc but when we’re at home and it’s just us, which it is during the week as dog-dad works in London, we have a solid routine which largely comprises her being calm and asleep or just chilling. She’s a joy to be with.
We had a period where she was constantly dropping a ball in front of me in the house and I just went cold turkey and hid ALL of them. She’s now allowed to have a few in the house that she will carry around and bring to me sometimes, but she knows that balls are for finding not chasing, as the thing we are always working on is her specifically not chasing moving objects/creatures of any kind. For that reason I actively avoid people on walks with ball chuckers and will take literally any alternative route to get away from them.
The first thing I taught her when she was a puppy was to ‘go and lie down’ and it has been a blessing. People always say ‘oh she must be so mad at home!!!’ and no, she’s not, because she was taught at 12 weeks old that bed was a good place to be when I was busy. If she’s being annoying I just ignore her (provided she’s got everything she actually needs) because it’s not her time – it’s my time to work so that I can pay for her and her lifestyle!
She is the biggest part of my life without doubt but I knew that she would be when I got her. She does follow me around the house a lot though not all the time anymore, but I don’t mind as she’s my best girl. We haven’t got kids (yet) so she’s not in competition with anyone and it’s just me and her five days a week. She’s never had a dog walker though occasionally goes to daycare – there’s no way she’d need a two hour dog-walker walk on top of what she does. She’d just be even fitter and she’s plenty fit enough. If she finds forbidden items for attention she gets totally ignored (unless it’s dangerous, though it never is) and then puts them down, deflatedly. Your lovely girl sounds overstimulated to me. They pretend to be bored so we will bend to their will – if you’re busy, just ignore! She has to learn that it’s not always her time and that the best thing she can do is to chill out. They're the best dogs but they can be a lot – if you let them!
(Congrats if you got to the end of this extremely long essay. I am a professional writer but apparently brevity doesn't come naturally to me on Mumsnet.)