Hi.
My 18 month old wcs has a pretty nice life. We live in a great place for dogs so every morning we just go out of our back gate, along a footpath on lead for 5 minutes (still pulling despite my best efforts-she'll do 'close' but then just steams off again
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Then at the end of the path, lead is unclipped and she waits until I say she can go.
There are various ways we can go around the surrounding acres of open fields and woodlands. The first half of the walk I do a few recalls with treats and she invariably will bump into some other dogs and have a play. Then we'll go into the woods and do some tennis ball finding which is what she absolutely loves. If I have tennis balls, her attention is completely on me. During this she will drop on the whistle, come close, wait etc. However, our walks have closed in a bit since the last time we ranged out over the fields a long way she went pheasant crazy and was ignoring everything. I am now a bit nervous about taking out there again as she was spotted by a game keeper who had a go at me. She was only gone a few minutes but it's not a nice feeling to realise your animal has gone completely deaf. It's very frustrating because she is otherwise pretty good when she's out and about and I've never lost her but now I feel a bit nervous that she might do it again and I don't want her to practise!!. She does like to be with me but that was like a different dog. Her chase instinct is very intense and she is so fast you could never catch her if she'd decided not to come back.
At the end of a normal walk she knows it's the end and I call her in, she'll let me have her ball and lead on and gets treats. When the waters not too cold, she loves it if we throw a ball into the river-she will run full tilt and take off with a huge leap through the air into the river-landing in a spectacular belly flop, completely submerging and rising triumphant with her ball! It's fantastic to watch and always draws a crowd of smilng passers by!
On balance, some walks have been sometimes a bit stressful for us, but I love to see the joy of a spaniel being a spaniel. She still has some behaviours that are inappropriate but she does love people and is good with other dogs and she has a wonderful time when she is having her walks so I hope that all the niggles will come good in the end.