Hi I have came here to see if anyone can offer me some advice. In January we picked up our 9 week old cocker spaniel puppy, who is half show half working. Since we picked him up we have struggled quite a bit with a few things.
The worst one is that Our pup is very, very bitey, he is now 23 weeks old and has episodes where he will jump up onto the sofa and just try to bite into my arm, when I get him off the sofa he will lunge at me trying to jump onto me and he will be trying to get a hold of my legs and sometimes he will even be barking at me. I am embarrassed to say that there has been a few times where I have felt afraid of him as he almost seems out of control. When I get up to leave he will follow biting me as I go. He does this with my partner but Is much worse with me when I’m on my own with him - he never barks or anything at him.
The second problem is barking - he has been very barky since we brought him home, he used to bark at us for food and attention although this has subsided a lot as we ignored it. But he barks at other dogs on walks, it started out as him barking back at dogs who barked at him first, but in recent weeks he is initiating the barking and will continue to do it - he also won’t walk on if another dog is behind him. We took him to puppy classes where he basically barked non stop the entire time despite no other dogs barking. He also has occasionally barked at families with young children and no dog, he barked at a scooter and twice when we took him to the local market he barked at a man playing live music- all of this makes me worried that he is going to be a reactive or unfriendly dog- I felt we socialised him well but now I am unsure
Everyone I speak to about it can’t believe that a 5 month old pup is barking at other dogs and call him ‘ballsy’ which just makes me more worried!
has anyone else experienced this? Or could it be a sign he wasn’t socialised well enough?
He also has problems being left alone and will cry and sometimes bark when I go upstairs without him.
We waited a long time and did a lot of research before getting our puppy and he can be so sweet and loving - I just feel as though he is way more chaotic and badly behaved than any other puppy I know and it’s making me very worried about how he is going to grow up