Thank you my cyber friends
You know, I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't sometimes. I'd have been lambasted and criticised by some if I'd just thrown in the towel at the beginning and thought "what the heck, lets just get rid of him now without trying anything". Instead, I've tried every product out there to try and calm him down, been following a trainer's plan and had him physically checked at the vets. We live behind gates, in an abnormal family life situation, which frankly can't be helping Archie's state of mind one bit and it's sure as heck not enhancing my children's lives. It would be an impossibility to keep them separated permanently - he would have to live in a crate and the kids would not be allowed in two of the main rooms in the house (living room or kitchen, where he is currently allowed)
And by the way, he has 2 or 3 daily walks, does clicker and recall training and we play fetch/find games in our garden. As for the crack about "spending too much time on forums", COL has been a great source of help and support over the past 5 years and things would definitely have turned out very different had I not had various advice from here.
Re. diet - he has been on Millies Wolfheart since January and he is thriving on it. Previous to this, I'd tried various good quality and not so good, to find one that suited, most he lost weight on, his output was frequent, large and smelly which seemed to indicate he wasn't gaining anything nutritionally.
My breeder believes he needs a much lower protein food (less than 20%) as 24% is too high and will cause these aggressive and hyper behaviours?? However, all the food out there with this amount of protein seems to have lots of rubbish and fillers in. Anyone care to comment on this claim?