Adolescence, or Worrying Problem Behaviours?

[RoxChops]

Not sure how to proceed with our 16 month working cocker - any advice would be gratefully received.

She’s an absolutely sweetie at heart, loving and loyal. She’s amazing on walks, recall is perfect, always sticks close. She’s fab at home most of the time but can get easily overstimulated (of course) and definitely thinks she rules the roost. She struggles to settle if it’s not on our lap/in her crate/at the end of the day on the sofa. She gets one big walk a day where she’ll have a good run and we'll always do scent work. We do one training session in the house a day and a short lead walk too.

Her issues….

She’s quite fearful of strangers - we have to do lots of management when new/unfamiliar people come into the house. She is getting better and warming to our visitors more quickly as time goes by. However, if we’re at a cafe and people show her attention she will bark at them and has lunged before. We always advocate for her where we can.

She’s pretty inconsistent on the lead. We do lead training at the end of every big walk and she’s pretty good, but a lead walk first thing is such a nightmare with her constantly pulling and only paying us attention if we have a treat in our hand.

Though we train it very often she really struggles with ‘leave’, is pretty awful with ‘drop’. We do threshold work every time she goes out for a pee or we leave the house for a walk and it’s like we’re asking her to do it for the first time every time.

She has guarded things in the past - she will only guard things that she knows she’s not supposed to have (a sponge, a piece of paper, a shoe) we’re working on ‘drop’ but she really struggles to give up anything that she’s decided she wants to keep. Often she’ll just run off or eat whatever she has as quickly as possible and on a rare occasion she’ll growl (she did once bite my husband - he picked her up to retrieve a dangerous item from her and she snapped, didn’t hold on but did draw a small amount of blood - we totally recognise his part in how that happened). We always honour this warning now and try different ways of retrieving the item off her.

Recently, while she was away with my husband and his family she yipped/snapped at our 7 year old nephew when he approached my husband and she was on his lap. He said ‘no’ and popped her into another room for a short while. Later on the nephew came downstairs to get something (didn’t go near them) and she barked at him. She was playing and doing ‘search’ with him perfectly well earlier in the day and had no issue with him the night before.

My husband’s family thinks we should spay her (she’s yet to have her second season) but I’ve seen on the web that quite a few studies think any signs of aggression can increase after spaying. I’ve heard horror stories of happy pups becoming aggressive after spaying and this is my greatest fear.

I’m wondering whether or not this is just adolescence and we should continue our training, wait it out a little longer and continuing managing her as we currently are? Or is there an over arching behavioural issue that all of this relates to that we need to address?

Has anyone experienced anything like this with their pooch and have any recommendations/suggestions/success stories?

Thank you in advance! Katie

[bizzylizzy]

Hi and welcome! Glad you‘ve found us, hopefully you‘ll be able tp pick up a few tips here to help you address some of your girl‘s issues. A lot of the behaviour you‘ve described is very typical cocker i.e.breed related which means you might have to accept that the best way forward is to manage it rather than make it a battle of wills. 
Loose lead walking has been a constant topic on this forum since I joined 9 years ago, lots of people have tried lots of methods, I think you just have to see what works best for you and yours but it‘s a continuous process, they‘re active inquisitve dogs bred for searching out birds and I think it goes against their nature to amble along as a just a companion. It took me a long long time to wake up to that but once I finally did I started to feel a bit more relaxed about it!  . Leave and Drop are similar although we‘ve managed a reasonable result with lots of positive training and big rewards, Humphrey will happily give up some things but can get very possessive of others so its a matter of deciding when a battle is really necessary, for instance if he has something dangerous, and when I should just ignore it, he gets really grumpy with a balls so I just don‘t let him have them.
One thing that really jumped out at me in your post was that it sounds as if your dog is defending you against the intruders/ visitors etc. and sees that as her mission. I would try to turn that around and concentrate on giving her  message that YOU are in control and she can take a back seat, When visitors arrive,train  her to go to her bed and stay there until everyone‘s settled and she can come and greet them, tell everyone not to make a huge fuss of her as soon as they arrive, in short she has to learn that she‘s not the focus and its not her job to be your body guard. Another thing I would avoid is picking her up on your lap, that‘s giving her an ideal position to try to show her authority.
Constantly having to guard and look after its humans is very stressful for a dog, she needs to get the message that that‘s not her job, if you get what I mean.
As far as speying is concerned, I‘ve only ever had male dogs and had to have my current dog neutered for medical reasons but personally and only from my own experience, I don‘t think it has any positive training effects and on the contrary can possibly cause other issues, includinb weight gain, change of coat etc. I‘d urge you to give it a lot of thought and plenty of time before you resort to it.
Hope that’s helped a bit! Main thing is to reassure you you‘re really not alone, I don’t think any of the issues you describe aren‘t trainable or at least manageable and your dog is still young and trying to see how far she can go.
Good luck, do stick with us and let us know how things go. 

[Mudmagnets]

What a great post from bizzylizzie. I'm sure you will find the information most useful. 

[RoxChops]

Bizzylizzy thank you for such an extensive reply!

What you've shared is extremely reassuring and prompts me to keep going with what we're currently doing. We do have a lovely trainer who is helping us with the visitors etc but I didn't consider that she's taken it upon herself to keep us 'safe' (thought it was just fear!) - I'll need to teach her that, other than searching out things in the house and on her walks, she's completely unemployed!

Chatting with my husband last night I did suggest that we have a no sofa rule when we're in the company of others - she's so used to being a sofa queen and stubborn enough that I imagine this is going to take some hard work but we're not afraid of the graft!

Thank you again, I'm going to press on and will certainly update this post with any successes we have along the way. I'm so glad I found this forum - no other site makes you feel quite as 'seen' in the honour of being a WCS Guardian!

Kx

[bizzylizzy]

  :l
Re the sofa, - if its any consolation, my dog Humphrey has always been on the sofa since he was about 12 weeks ( my resolution NOT to allow him on there having lasting just 4 weeks!  ), he slept there during the day aswell and after nine years we finally decided it was time to replace it. I dreaded his reaction to not being allowed on the new one but it was much easier than I anticipated and after a couple of days he gave up, occasionally he‘ll „forget“ and I‘ll find him curled up on my seat but one stern look and a pointed finger towards his own bed and he slinks off guiltily  which always makes me laugh!
But don’t wait til visitors arrive, get her used to only being allowed on there when invited by you and/or train a command for her to get off.
 xx