Anyone own a cocker and still have a nice house/garden???

[johndoran]

House not too bad ,had to replace carpet with laminate and put throws on the furniture so just a bit more cleaning really no serious damage. Haven't got a garden now you could call a garden had to take up the lawn and slab it so just got some pots with plants but even had to raise them up. Seem to have got off quite lightly compared to some of you  

[kalem]

 

Have to say ive been blessed with an  He has never chewed anything, not a bit of carpet, no flooring or walls, no skirting boards, and as for the garden, it is shingled and has pots dotted about but when he runs around on many of his mad five minutes, he does scatter the stones over the borders 

And at ten months old he no longer uses the crate, and has been fantastic, even when ive been to work, so sorry but 

[little_jack]

I am sooooo jealous of all you lucky people and your lovely houses. The flower beds have now been fenced off properly so I live in hope of regaining some flowers. The grass is a goner though. Wish me luck because we are getting the kitchen done this week (white, gloss cabinets  perhaps not the best choice). At least the upstairs is ok, thank doG for stairgates 

[SimonandMandy]

Good luck with the flower beds, we have just pulled our garden fencing around the rockery down after it became an excellent agility exercise  am hoping that fence down takes away the challenge of needing to be in the rockery and have cut back all the shrubs that became home to the toys that needed to be buried.  Have a very nice trench though that gets re-dug most days of the week but if this is the worst Harvey is going to do I shall not complain....  that is until the muddy footprints end up all over my white linen  as they have been known to of late

I must admit I keep saying I want a grass lawn as we are garden/shingle but reading all these posts, I may change my mind 

[Karma]

House isn't too bad really - she's scratched at the dining room door (leaving the deep gouges Beth was talking about) - that's our morning wake-up call   And then slight scratches on the back doors...

We can't have rugs down, as she chews them  
And paw prints are common on the side panels of the kitchen worktops.
We did have a very destroyed sofa bed mattress, which made the conservatory look like a demolition site, however we managed to pick up a replacement at the tip the other week (for £4   ), so she's forgiven for that one now  
We do get mud trailed in the house very regularly, but I don't stress about that... should probably hoover more, but life's too short...  

The garden, we are currently battling with... on the whole it isn't too bad - there are a few holes, and lots of brown patches... she takes a dislike to certain plants and with dig them up... but we are planning to put in a raised bed to grow some veggies, and basically dog-proof anything we put in... She has destroyed some of our herbs in pots by dragging the pots around the garden, so in future anything in a pot will need to be a heavy pot...    

[Joules]

Errrrrrr, yes  but then Coco is kept chained up most of the time (Joking  ) Not much damage since Coco was a pup and thankfully she is not a digger.  She doesn't have free run of the house though as she tends to cause chaos so her "improvements" are limited to the room she sleeps in.  Most of the damage in the garden is caused by chickens and alpacas  

[ollie1]

My cocker Ollie is really good he has never chewed anything ( oh sorry ) forgot to say the bedroom carpet when he was four months old . Our vet told us to put a dilution of chili powder and water sprayed around the edges of the carpet and said it would work . Yes it did since then he's chewed nothing he's so good .

[kitegirl]

Did think we had got away with a few holes in the garden and muddy footprints in the kitchen and lounge until we got Lela ...   Last week she managed to chew the utility room lino, digging plants is a great game especially when you hide them somewhere else!!! The lawn or should I say what lawn has turned into a mud bath - but its not all the dogs fault - 2 kids on a trampoline hasn't helped!!

Apart from the utility floor the house has done relatively well. Always muddy mudprints but they wash and dyson up ok. The throws on the sofas are a godsend and there is always one in the wash.

There could be more damage this week as both Archie ans Lela had their girl/boys ops on Friday and are now running around the house in matching lampshades!!   They are great for shovelling up the soil from the garden to make a new border in the house. Looks like I'm going to have a busy week cleaning!!

[elaine.e]

I've been really lucky with William. When he was a little puppy he chewed through the speaker cables to the computer and television, gnawed a few bits of wood off the newel post at the bottom of the stairs, chewed 2 doormats and dug plants out of containers. But that all stopped and he's really, really good.

He doesn't dig holes or bury things in the garden. He doesn't chew anything in the house and since I changed his food to Burns he no longer throws up (except when he's snacked on loads of horse poo out on walks). He has his paws wiped after walks and when he's been in the garden if the grass is wet, so I don't have too much mud coming in.

About the worst I can say is that he likes to get all his cuddly toys out and scatter them aboout downstairs, so every few days I do a toy tidy up, and he leaves a few dirty marks when he rubs along the sofas or wipes his nose on the patio doors!

So why am I thinking about getting another one? Life is very easy with William and I like that.

[Biker3]

House is not too bad - have laminate floors so easy to keep clean
The girls sleep in the utlilty room and have chewed part of the wall (see photo below) and have also chewed the skirting - I dont really mind as they have'nt touched anything else in the house
The garden was like a swamp before we got the dogs - constantly wiping feet every time they go in and out - am getting the whole garden covered in gravel and a deck put in

[Tattydi]

i  must have had the best doggies in the world apart from brown patches on the lawn no other damage outside!

apart from muddy paws and hairs no damage in the house.

[hedgehog]

.  The back of the settee has lost it's shape from the cockers sitting on it to look out of the window,

Woodsters favourite place is on the top of the back of my arm chairs to goggle out of the window, he was the only one to do it but now my rottie and malamute x have cottoned on to his vantage point and the chair backs are gradualy sinking lower and lower My garden is like a scramble track and almost grass less and it looks like a bomb site with all of the craters which they have dug, it is a death trap trying to get to the washing line

[Angels of Fur]

like the picture of the wall..... far too familiar in my eyes. Apart from my house is farely new so they are plaster boards and once got through them there is a big gap and then the hallway plaster board wall. We put up plastic sheeting, which they have not damaged, looks better than it sounds.

I forgot to add, they shredded my vinyl flooring in the kitchen ( but i had the tiles ready upstairs to do the job ) just tha tthe dogs chose the time to get it done 

Ill admit that no damage lately in the house, will re do skirtings soon, as soon as i know they are out this stage!

Although plenty of brown patches and holes at the MIL's

[Nicola]

Our place is nice but it's far from pristine. The dogs never chew anything or scratch the doors or paintwork but the white sofas are in a bit of a state despite being permanently covered up with throws (they're not ours, they came with the flat!) and no matter how often I dust and hoover there still seems to be a fine layer of dog hairs and powdery brown dust on everything plus the obligatory snotty nose prints on the living room windows and a Tilly's-backside shaped dent in the top of the sofa  We don't have a garden, we use the big private gardens across the street so that's one less thing to worry about.

Alfie was a bit of a horror as a pup though, his nickname was 'the undertaker' because he buried EVERYTHING. The garden had more craters than the surface of the moon and he also chewed pretty much everything including most of the skirting boards in the kitchen and a huge chunk of plaster out of the wall which meant I had to replaster it and then fix plastic sheet things over it to stop him getting at it again. There was also a permanent Cocker-height tidemark on the paint in the hall so I had to repaint it every year.

[Sadiebear]

Sadie loves to dig - only a couple more days and she will be in Australia!  My lovely yellow rose bush will be very lucky to survive this summer and the spring bulbs went a long time ago, the gravel that looked so nice at the beginning of last spring is now in intermittent heaps around the garden - but all this is forgiven  after nearly forty years of marriage my husband now puts his socks in the wash basket every night otherwise they will not be there the next morning when I allow Sadie upstairs to wake him. Thank you Sadie, now can you teach him to put the lid down on the loo?