Is this normal for an 11 month old?

[cockerhelp]

I have a WCS. He is not my first dog but my first working cocker, but I have experience of them through family members. I did a huge amount of research before getting him, and knew exactly what I was getting myself in to getting a working breed. He suits our lifestyle very well and I’m hoping to get him involved in working in some capacity when he’s bigger.

I want to check if some behaviour he is displaying is ‘normal’ adolescent stuff or if there’s more behind it.

For background, we have trained him consistently from bringing him home at 8 weeks old. He walks to heel on and off lead, knows commands such as ‘middle’ etc, is good with a release cue. His sit isn’t as solid as I’d like it to be but we are working on it. Recall is hit and miss, which is to be expected at this age (it was perfect until 6/7 months). He gets a good off lead walk every day then a shorter sniffy lead walk in the evening. Off lead walk involves bits of training/games rather than just letting him loose. We are starting gundog training in the summer.

We have been working on a settle command for months, and a lot of the time he does settle very well in the house. The problem we are having is there’s many periods throughout the day (mostly in the evening) where he will be very mouthy and sometimes to the point where it hurts us. He will run at you biting and not let up, and will also hump me sometimes, but it hurts as he bits and claws at my leg. I know for a fact this is when he is over stimulated/aroused and needs to settle and have a nap. He will go over the edge and just lose it.

He hates his crate despite lots of crate training since we got him, so I don’t put him in there. If I change my body language and ignore him it doesn’t make a difference. Using his negative marker word does nothing. Saying no etc. also does nothing. Physically removing him from whoever he is biting makes him want to do it more. We have to shut him in a room and leave him to calm down, which sometimes works but often he will bark and bark. He doesn’t seem to care about any sort of ‘punishment.’

I, maybe wrongly, assumed this was a teenage thing and he would grow out of it but it seems to be getting worse recently. He never used to do this to my 12 year old child, only me and DH, but now he’s started doing it to them too which is less than ideal.

Is this something we should see a trainer about specifically? I have tried googling and can’t find much info about whether this is usual behaviour for a young spaniel or not. Thanks for reading.

I can’t edit my original post to add this, but forgot to say if we leave the room and he does settle and nap, then he’s back to his normal sweet self afterwards. So it’s definitely an over tired/over aroused situation I think.

Yes, if it’s in the evening and he calms down once he’s left alone then it’s probably over stimulation and they do grow out of it. It’s not specific to cockers.

My male Goldie was slightly like this. He loved a good hump (and to chomp down when he did it). Behaviour started when he was about five months and in the end I got him a giant child’s cuddly toy to sexually harass to his hearts content. By about eighteen months it had stopped.

Could I have trained him out of it? Yes. Was it a hill I wanted to die on in terms of training when everything else was so good? No. So sex-elephant it was. Perhaps it was a lazy route but IMO there are behaviours that need tackling (aggressive biting) or behaviours you need to manage (humping). You can’t always train every issue your dog will throw up and, being frank, if he’s mid hump the last thing on his mind is going to be follow instructions from you.

That being said, you could probably be speaking to a vet about when to castrate. I don’t tend to advocate for castration, but humping humans is a definite ‘chop off the balls’ reflex from me, particularly if you’re struggling to get him to stop. I guess you could try my sex elephant route (which honesty did work wonders), but not everyone is keen to let them ‘have at it’ and ‘work it out.’

Ultimately though, he’s still young - and has his balls (I assume, and tbh even if he doesn’t…he’s still young) and that makes a big difference in terms of his behaviour.

Someone will pop up and say ‘oh this is spaniel rage’ (as the same 2 people always do on any spaniel related threads) so ignore them, please.

Totally normal and as you have said usually due to overstimuation and being over tired.

If it is happening regularly then I would try and preempt it with giving a chew to help relax and calm down.

I dont recommend castration as bitches do it as well as dogs. I find when the teeth are all through the humping tends to repace the over stimulated behaviour.

Totally agree with landsharks this is not spaniel rage!

My WCS is nearly 12 now but my god, I can't tell you how many times I could have rehomed him between 9 months and 2 years. He was a horror. Had to stay on a long line and completely ignored any instructions. I found consistency was the key - every bad behaviour got a sharp "BA!" from me and I turned my back if he was jumping up/mouthing and left the room. It took a while but we got there. We also had a "witching hour" early evening in which he was a complete menace. And watch the exercise - WCS are like olympic athletes, the more exercise you give the more they need. Snuffle mats are a great investment, as are licky mats for when you need to enforce some calm. And we used the crate until he was around 2 because when he got bitey/manic, he was usually over stimulated and over tired.

If it reassures you, mine came out the other side to be the best friend I've ever had. He's an absolute diamond of a dog.

@LandSharksAnonymoussex elephant made me laugh! Unfortunately he destroys absolutely anything he is given, so a big soft toy would probably last 30 minutes, as much as he would love it. He has a blanket which is ripped to shreds and that’s his usual choice of thing to hump, alongside my leg or DH’s arm.

@lionbrain@Wakemeupbe4yougogoalso thank you both so much for replying too. It has genuinely made me feel so much better! I am so glad to hear that yours has turned into a diamond. He is so clever and loving and can be so sweet, but this behaviour makes me worry that I’m doing something wrong and he’s going to be like this forever. It’s such a slog when you’re in the thick of it.

I wrote this out after a particularly savage biting and humping session, but I shut him in the living room and he crashed out and went to sleep straight away. I’ve had a hot bath and come back downstairs and he’s back to his gorgeous self again.

He sounds incredibly overstimulated - how much sleep is he getting during the day?

He does sound overstimulated and over tired What does he hate about the crate ?

Fwiw my wcs is 2.5 and has calmed down a lot he used to be a nightmare in the evenings

If it tends to happen the same sort of time each evening I’d be inclined to try and pre empt it and shut him away for a nap before he gets going.

My pups have always had crate naps throughout the day to avoid over stimulation and whilst he doesn’t have a crate, if he’s fine in a room on his own that works just as well.

He does actually get plenty of sleep through the day. I work from home, so he gets up with me in the morning and has his breakfast then will nap while I work until around 11am. Then he gets his lunchtime walk and will snooze most of the afternoon too until I finish work at 5. So I don’t think there’s any need for the crate really as he sleeps fine outside of it. I did used to enforce naps in there when he was much smaller but he started disliking it when he hit adolescence.

I think maybe he does just need to mature a bit, and also pre-empting it is a good idea. It does mostly happen in the evening but can occasionally happen in the daytime too.

Just to say my WCS, an 8 month old bitch Belle is like this with the mouthing/ biting - and is also not crated, although I am tempted to start that training again. She is doing well at training, and like you I am confident she is getting enough stimulation - including early gun dog training.

She definitely does struggle to calm down though and we have a busy household which I'm finding does not help. She hated the crate, despite me trying for several months - and started to settle better in the living room, and sleep down there at night with no issues so I gave it up. I don't think she is getting enough sleep though so maybe I have to start it up again.

It does help to know I'm not the only one dealing with a crackpot when they're tired!

Sorry you’re having the same issue! It must mean it’s entirely normal though.

I don’t believe crating is necessary for all dogs. Some simply don’t get on with it, and that is fine.

Our household is pretty quiet so I think that has helped with teaching mine to switch off. I sit at the table and work through the day, and DH and DD are out of the house, so it’s very boring for him until it’s time for his walk and then time for everyone else to get home. He is very much interested in what’s going on otherwise, so if we were in and out and busy all day I don’t think he would sleep either and he’d just be following us all about 😄

I have a 23-month-old working cocker on my lap, and this definitely sounds like classic over-tiredness/over-stimulation. My girl still mouths sometimes me when she’s knackered – in the evenings when I’m faffing about getting changed and preparing to settle down myself on the sofa she will run at me like a mad thing, as you describe, but all it means is that she's tired. It’s nothing to worry about because I know what it means and it’s something that has an easy fix: sleep. I don’t tell her off, just put my hands up and calmly say ‘stop now’.

Agree with others that it’s nothing like so-called ’spaniel rage’. He’s just a young dog and hasn’t quite learned to regulate his emotions yet. He’s still a teenager at that age, even if you feel like that phase is over in other aspects. Pre-empting it is a good idea – let him ‘win’, as you would in training, by not letting him get to the point where he loses control. Then you can praise the settling without having to put him in 'jail' first.

I know it feels quite grim sometimes when they’re like this but cockers are the very best dogs and he will almost certainly grow out of it. The dog I’ve got now compared to the puppy I cried over is unrecognisable – she’s the light of my life.

(Incidentally, we didn’t crate train our girl, didn’t even buy one and it has had zero negative effects – if anything it made settling in the house easier as we didn’t have to teach it twice in different locations.)

Do you lead him in the house op? We had/have a house lead and when .the dog was getting too much we put a lead on and have him sit beside us on the floor, so it's an enforced settle.

Also "The Cocker academy "on Facebook/Instagram @is a great group to be in they run free online workshops

Thank you, I am a bit of a lurker on this board and have seen you always give great advice - especially to other cocker owners !! Your girl sounds lovely. I remember reading about cocker rage before I got him and it scared me. He is hard work and there’s always a worry that we are doing something wrong. I can get bogged down watching a lot of YouTube videos from different trainers and it’s a bit of information overload !!

@cockerhelp Ahh you're very kind! I'm by no means an expert and only have my own experience to help but if I can make anyone's cocker life better than I'll try to. I agree there's a lot of information out there and it can be really overwhelming.

The adolescent thread dips in and out but we are all still there if you want some solidarity x

At this age their hormones are all over the place even in a given day, and humping is quite often not sexual at all. My half-a-WCS is definitely much more of a horror when tired/over-aroused, though he's not a humper, and there's no real difference in terms of time of day. When he's home with me my routine is quite similar to yours. The difference is maybe that you have other people coming home in the evening, and that makes your boy a bit more bonkers when he's already tired?

You sound like you know what you're doing and you've got the napping down, which is often where people seem to struggle. Is there anything else you could do that would help to calm him? Is the sniffy walk before or after he goes mad? Could you give him a licky mat, or a chew, or make sure somehow that his evening routine is very calming? I'm thinking perhaps he has a very quiet day with you and then WOO PEOPLE ARE HOME YAY just as he's run out of brain.

You can get caught in that loop.of looking at videos can't you? Some of the trainers are absolutely rubbish and talk nonsense imo I only follow 2 on social media to stop the loop and it destroying my brain.

Yes I think you are right! I have just walked him earlier than usual to see if it helps. He does get a licky mat or chew to calm him down sometimes but often he’s past the point of no return. It’s hard as he goes from 0-100 so a lot of the time you can’t pre-empt he’s almost going over the edge.

Yes I was really bad for it especially when he was a small puppy. I think the internet and being able to access so much information is wonderful, but it can have the opposite effect and be so overwhelming. It’s hard to know who is ‘right’ and who is talking out of their arse!

I mean you are not wrong.!There is a gun dog trainer on instagram she doesn't give training tips but does explain the temperament and behaviour of cockers really well, I like her and she has a cute dog who's a "character" so the videos are fun to watch.

Have you tried making a high pitched yelp when he bites like a puppy would make if they were bitten that would snap our working cocker springer cross out of the biting but ours was a savage until about a year of age when he stopped. He was a lovely dog and needed a lot of mental stimulation as he would get bored quickly. How long are walks of lead ours needed an hour off lead a day to tire. If they work properly they would be doing a few hours off lead and then not go out for a couple of days.

Yes he doesn’t give a hoot about any yelping etc we have ever done. Nothing seems to snap him out of it! It’s frustrating as there’s lots of advice about doing stuff like that but none of it makes a difference to him at all.

He gets about an hour to an hour and a half walk at lunch time which is a mixture of off lead and on lead but it varies depending on which route we do, then he gets 15-20 minutes on lead with lots of sniffing in the evening.

I think the advice on yelping can be counter-productive sometimes too - if you have a dog with prey drive, it can either get them over-aroused or they think it's part of the game. It's not something DTAS (Dog Training and Advice on FB) recommend and they're usually my training bible.

Did the earlier walk make any difference? What time does he get up in the morning and go to sleep at night? My little hooligan would cheerfully get up at 5am if I let him but we've negotiated to between 6:30am and 7am, which means he tends to conk out by 7:30pm after his last poo and mooch. I'd sort of like a lie in, but if I encouraged him to stay up later I know he'd be a horror and I decided I needed the calm evenings more than the mornings.

DTAS have an article on lounge is for lounging - the idea is that the dog is only allowed in this one room where you're watching telly when they're calm and settled; play and zoomies etc. happens elsewhere. I'm not strict about it, but in the evenings he can have a chew in there with me, or he can sleep, but he's not getting played with, so he generally just conks now.

PS if you could manage a slightly longer sniffy walk in the evening that might help too - 30 minutes lots of long grass and squirrel scents are very useful for wearing them out before bed.