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.