Hi everyone, this is our first post - I'm so pleased to have discovered this forum full of people with masses of experience and great advice on having cockers, it's so reassuring to read about everyone's experiences and words of wisdom
Our working cocker is 14 months, unneutered, and generally wonderful - he is super bright, like so many cockers, and full of energy and constantly 'on' - really high octane. He gets training every day, does gun dog training most weeks, and has two longish walks, on and off lead per day. He stays in our kitchen which is the heart of our home and one or more of us are usually down there (there is me and my husband and two teenagers). However, in the last few weeks he has started testing us more and I wonder if it is just teenage boundary pushing. He is really hyper, and particularly with me his behaviour is more challenging - I know cockers form very strong attachments and I am his main carer, but I am looking for advice on managing this and other peoples' experiences of similar behaviour.
For example, he barks and spins in circles really fast when I leave the kitchen to go and do anything elsewhere in the house until I come back. If I sit down in the kitchen bit where we have a TV, or in the garden, he tracks back and forth at high speed, although he doesn't do this with anyone else, and he doesn't switch off at night until about 10pm when he crashes out. He has also started barking every time he goes into the garden and it seems impossible to stop him. I feel like I'm flailing around a bit with how to deal with this behaviour - I have read a bit about boundary mats, and games, which may help when we want him to settle down - can anyone recommend any specific websites or trainers they have used please for these?
And with barking, it seems that teaching him to 'talk' and then 'quiet' may be the way forward - but given how crazy he gets when I leave the room, it's really hard to get him to focus on what I want him to do. Any thoughts would be much appreciated - we know there is a lot of training work to be done (we know it's an ongoing process that never really stops!) but we just want to be sure we are dong the right things really - it seems to be quite easy to get it wrong and inadvertently teach bad habits. Thank you so much - looking forward to hearing any thoughts