Hi again everyone. You might have read my previous message of about a month ago when I was looking for an older cocker to rehome. Well I found him really quickly (6 year old black boy called Harry), and things were great to start with, even with the fact that he is not house trained. However, things are rapidly going peared shaped and my other half will not take it for much longer.
The main problem we are having is that he is quite aggressive. He has a habit of picking things up from everywhere, no matter how much stuff we put out of reach, he always finds something to grab hold of. Things like tea towels we just take off him by distracting him with a toy, but if it is food items, he goes nuts about. He grabbed hold of a plastic carton of milk (we own a hotel) tonight. Obviously we could not let him have it as the sides are quite sharp and he might cut himself. My other half tried to get it off Harry and he turned round and bit him so hard there was blood everywhere (from Martyn, not Harry). He also went nuts at a man while we were out walking the other day; it was only because Martyn was so quick to pull him back that he didn't take the mans hand off. In mitigation, this bloke should not have tried to fuss a strange dog but he probably thought that Harry would be ok as his tail was wagging before he freaked out. He has done this to a few other people as well now.
We don't know what kind of a family he came from (although they did admit he was living outside for 2 years) and he has had no training. We had him castrated as he was 'worrying' my duvets, cusions and the cats (cats not liking that at all) but he was like this before the snip. I know that it is early days with us all settling down and getting to know one another, but it would be nice to know that he may be trained/learn that this behaviour is not acceptable.
We want to keep him, but this is the 3rd time Martyn has been bitten and I've been bitten about 4 times now. I don't want to be wary of him all the time. Any ideas at all? :-
