Thanks It'sme. I was admiring the training vid pup on his mat being so calm. It set me looking on Youtube to see if I could find a cocker example of how extremely excited Fraser gets when anyone comes to the door for comparison. And if it's one of his longstanding friends, well, his screams of excitement echo round the neighbourhood. No joke. They're penetrating. So far, the best solution has been to have a treat ball primed and ready to go by the door and when someone comes, I throw it in the opposite direction. Once the excitement spiral is broken, it lowers to a more manageable level. Luckily, all my friends except my brother are fond of Fraser and let him claim them by sitting next to them with his elbow on their thigh (to pin them down?
) His whole body gesture is Mine! Mine! And he looks at me archly as if to say, See how I'm loved by my other people? It's quite funny.
To stop him whining with impatience while I was cleaning his bowl and getting his food out last night, I put him in Leave posture with a treat in front of him. I discovered he can whine while obeying Leave. Usually, absent the food prep, he sits rigidly and silently with his head pulled up tight and face averted from the treat, again quite funny, as he tries strenuously to ignore it until released.
Later in the evening he was whining and staring at me from his post on the other sofa. I think he either wanted attention (though he ignored my invitation to come up beside me) or was pretending he needed out to get his prompt return treat. (He's got a bit of a scam going.) I tried ignoring him while I watched TV, but the whining and the sensation of eyes boring into the side of my head was distracting, so eventually after doing 'talk to the hand', I held up my lap desk to block his view. :005:Good thing no one was watching me other than the dog. Actually it got worse (my attempts to block his gaze.) My arm got tired holding up the lap desk, so I brought my bedroom standing mirror into the living room and put it in front of his sofa. Do I hear sniggering out there? Stoppit. But it worked as he fell silent and moped behind the mirror and let me get on with my program. If anyone had come in, they would have thought I was a vain princess needing to watch myself in a full length mirror as I watched TV.
As you can see, a work in progress.