Hello everyone!
It's been a while since I posted on here.On the whole, everything is going really well with Jake (who is now 13 months old).
Training wise he is excellent - he knows a lot of commands + is a joy to walk on the field.
A few months ago I posted about some resource guarding behaviour (to do with his food + chews). I worked through the book 'Mine' and noticed some real improvements with this. We also have implemented a 'Leave it until I say so' policy and many other things + his behaviour with food is now much better and manageable.
Which leads me on to the new problem...
About a month ago we had some friends round and I put Jake to bed. One of them put his fingers through his crate bars and Jake bit him a drew blood. The same thing happened a few nights later, this time to me, when I reached for his water dish (again inside his crate where he was awake). Due to this, guests are now told not to touch Jake in his crate as he seems to be a bit anxious in there (or maybe possessive of his space?). Anway, this is quite manageable.
We went on holiday last week and left Jake with my parents. On one of the days, my Dad had been playing with Jake in the garden. Jake ran in and flopped down on a little dog bed mattress type thing. My dad bent down to tell him what a good boy he was and Jake bit him! Quite hard, and drew blood.
Now after extensive research, this type of problem (I think) can be put down to two sources
1) It's a dominance type thing, whereby Jake is guarding the things that he thinks are his
2) It's an anxiety thing, whereby his space is being invaded so he lashes out
Now I know that dominance theory seems to be much criticsed at the moment. I spoke to one of the top Cocker Spaniel trainers (Ben Randall) who told me the only way to correct this is to assert dominance. Tell him off if he snaps + he even advised shaking a bottle of pebbles at him whenever he does anything like this. This is the complete opposite to other theories however, whereby punishment is never to be used and instead positive training (getting him used to being touched in these places by myself and/or strangers) will get results.
I just wondered if anyone else had any similar experiences with their Spaniels and this touch related / location based snapping? Jake is 13 months and an adolescent, so if anyone has any stories, words of wisdom or reassurance that this will get better Id be much appreciated! My biggest worry is that it esculates, or that he bites a child. I don't want to see my little boy put down