Ok, so I’m still having a bit of a nightmare walking Jess and would really appreciate suggestions for how to help her stay calm and become more confident. I’ve managed to get her to accept a harness and have got her a better collar and lead combination so I’m slightly less worried about injury but it’s still no fun for either of us when she’s twisting and lunging all the time. This post is really long, sorry! I've tried to include everything that seems relevant. Since my last post on this I’ve been searching fruitlessly for an off-lead space, partly to train lead-behaviour and partly to practice recall (though I think the ship may have sailed on this already. On the few occasions I have been able to let her off-lead, I put her back on as soon as I saw another dog or a person. This has definitely been the right decision as when she’s noticed them she has lunged wildly towards them. If I wasn’t fast enough in getting her back on the lead I’m certain she would be away.) That’s problem number 1 – still lunging and pulling wildly on the lead. It’s bad lead manners but I think it’s really a question of ‘threshold’. Her excitement gets beyond awareness and attention. I’ve been trying to work with this by sitting with her quietly watching people and feeding her treats. It works while we’re sitting but not when we’re walking. If there is a person or dog then I can pick her up and walk her away from the distraction and that works ok but it doesn’t seem to be making her any calmer on subsequent occasions. Is there a better approach? Problem number 2 is that she sometimes get quite distressed on walks. In hunting for a safe off-lead place I’ve driven her to a number of fields and parks. Maybe once every two days we’ve tried a new spot. I’ve begun to realise that these walks follow a pattern. At first I always think it’s going well – her tail is wagging and she seems happy and perky, she is walking quite well on the lead and she will respond to my voice and sit for treats. But when we turn to go back she bolts for the direction that we came from, pulls desperately all the way back, and gets really wild. Sometimes she whines and sounds really distressed. I don’t know what’s happening. This has happened at least 3 times, in 3 different areas. (In our local park she pulls all the time in both directions - but in the local park I think it is because she is excited and overwhelmed by all the smells and distractions, while in the other parks/fields it has seemed more like anxiety and distress. There have been no other dogs or people around on those occasions). I wondered if she was maybe over-tired, as trying to find a safe place to let her off-lead has meant walking her a little further than I would like to. Not miles, but probably a few hundred metres (about 10 minutes’ walk). Sometimes sitting down and holding her helps to calm her down, but today that didn’t help at all and she kept trying to bolt in the direction of the car. If she was off-lead I’m afraid she would properly bolt and would end up on the road. I think there are several issues, which may or may not be related: wanting to let her off-lead but worried that she will bolt; trying to build her threshold of tolerance for people/dogs; trying to understand what she is distressed by when she is bolting for home. An underlying anxiety is a possibility, though she also seems to really like people and to want to meet dogs. I did try to socialise her but maybe I didn’t do enough? The other obvious answer is that I’m overdoing the ‘walks’. That could be a factor when we’ve been looking for an off-lead field but I don’t think it is the root of the problem. If I walk her from my house we are walking for only around 5-10 minutes. My garden is a terraced-house yard with about 8 sq. ft of grass, and trying to tire her with training games and other distractions seems to culminate in nippy behaviour and wild zooming around. Of course, I might just need more/better games to play at home, and I'd appreciate suggestions for that. Would love to know what others think might be happening. (I also wondered whether the fact that she’s a spaniel is relevant. She seems to have a very high prey drive and freezes/quivers/nose-twitches when she gets over-excited. She does seem to want to stay close to me most of the time, but if she went over threshold I do think this would be trumped by her desire to run/chase/bolt.) Any suggestions welcome, I feel like I’m managing this badly at the moment. (Though she also gets really, really excited when she sees the lead etc coming out, so she does WANT to go out. She just doesn't always seem to enjoy it when we get there!)
I have five spaniels of different breeds including one working cocker. All of my dogs are working gundogs so I have brought them up with that in mind and not so much as pet dogs. By that I mean I don't take my dogs for walks in parks or through fields. When I'm out and about with them everything has a purpose. That means there is no free running. When they are off lead I either train walking to heel, retrieving or controlled hunting. With a pup of your age that would be just very short sessions of a few minutes and most of it would be in areas of very low/no distractions. If the only area you have for that is your back garden then that is fine, for most things at least. For the controlled hunting you will need a little corner in a meadow ideally with nice soft grass. If she like tennis balls or rolled up socks, hide them in the grass and get her to hunt them out. I don't know what your plans are for your little spaniel, if you want to work her or maybe just do gundog training for fun, then bringing out her desire to retrieve and nurturing that part of her would be my priority at the moment. Tennis balls or little puppy dummies or even little soft toys are ideal. You might feel that none of that is relevant to you because you won't be working her but if nothing else it will form a bond between you which you will need as she grows up and gets more confident.
I have a dog that used to get so stupidly excited it was unbelievable. This is something I wrote in January 2014 when my dog was 11 months old: My dog is a show line Labrador - you know, those ones that are a bit quieter than working line Labradors and don't have any prey drive or interest in their environment. There is a thin line between over excitement and frustration and being anxious and distressed. It is easy for an over excited, frustrated dog to turn into a reactive dog - so it's not surprising to be seeing signs of both. The steps you have to take in either case are tiny. So tiny it's hard to believe. That field that I refer to in the post is a football field in my local park. It took us until he was 18 months old to walk across that field (he was on rest for some of the time, the whole thing was made worse by extensive injury time when he was younger). Tiny steps. Not 10 minutes in the environment, think in terms of 30 seconds, 1m inside the park, 2m inside the park. Being way, way, away from the distractions - it is very difficult to do this on walks. I found someone with a field and a lot of dogs. We started by her having one perfectly trained dog sat still and my dog as far away as possible (we couldn't get any further away and still be in the same field). Sitting and doing nothing worked for me - although I started off with a gundog trainer doing this, and I was glad of the advice. She could tell me what to worry about, and when to ignore my dog, and so on. I wouldn't have liked to have done it alone. I had him on a back fastening harness and tied to things (so I couldn't mess with his lead). I think you should go see Helen Philips (she was my trainer) - she is close to you.
Thanks both. Yes, I definitely do want to train her as a gundog. That's been my plan from the beginning, though my actual plan was to get a labrador because I thought it would be an easier first gundog. But the litter I was due to get a labrador pup from fell through at precisely the moment that my dad's spaniel litter became available. This was by far the best time of year for me to have a puppy - so I am the proud owner of a delightful but determined little spaniel! Helpful advice from you both, and it sounds as though I need to revise my expectations, take things a lot more slowly and put together a training plan for our time at home & outside. I have noticed that her lead behaviour is a lot better when I walk from side to side rather than in a straight line - but only up to the point that she loses her mind and can't concentrate. Heidrun, with a young spaniel puppy, how many training sessions would you do in a day? How much time out and about? Jess has a lot of energy and I'm not sure how best to manage that. Yes, I might contact Helen Philips - it seemed far too early, but maybe best to get the right foundations at this point. And that does remind me that I was going to buy her book.... Thanks, that was helpful.
Ah ok, a complete baby then. A couple of retrieves a day, by that I mean sitting on the floor with her where there are absolutely no distractions at all and just roll a tennis ball away from her, hold her briefly and then let her run after it to retrieve it. Get her to bring it right back to you even if it means you are lying on the ground making silly noises and she is jumping all over you with the tennis ball or whatever she loves in her mouth. Then take it very gently from her mouth. Rinse and repeat. But like I said just a couple of times a day. Do little bit of 'sit' training a couple of times a day and some 'staying close to you' training in the garden which later will be your walking to heel off lead. Those things can be clicker trained. And that's pretty much all I would do with a puppy as young as yours. I would stay away from the park for now. She is way too young to cope with those sort of distractions and will only develop bad habits.
Thanks - that is very helpful. It sounds like I've been overdoing it so I'll dial it back several notches and see how that helps. A couple of weeks ago we spent the weekend at my partner's house, where the garden was big enough for her to have a good scamper around and then a nice snooze. It was lovely. In my garden, tiny though it is, there's a lot of walls/shrubs/stones and there doesn't seem to be room for her to take the edge of her energy. But my plan for this weekend was garden clearance and dog proofing so maybe I can make it a bit more appealing. This is probably a silly question, but if you would only do a few minutes of training a day, what do you do the rest of the time? She has several chew toys which she really likes, and balls (but I'm trying to ration the ball-throwing). She likes being petted and cuddled up to a point (after which she prefers biting and jumping!) She does sleep a lot but when she is awake she is quite energetic and demanding and I don't quite know how to engage with that other than going for a walk or trying to do some training, but it sounds like overdoing that is the root of the problem.
You could do little training sessions of tiny sit/stays, teach her down, teach her to go to a mat or her crate/bed on cue, a little bit of lead walking in the garden. All of those things are immensely tiring to her little brain and will tire her out. Remember not to leave balls lying around those are purely for training not toys as such. She doesn't need to go for walks. If you want to explore clicker training then there are masses of videos on YouTube on what to teach very young puppies.
I have a 9 week old pup right now (second dog) and I have no intention of taking her on lead walks for ages - months. We went to the park today, for her to sit on my lap and meet children. Depending on her temperament, I very well may continue to take her to the park (she has to live in London, and socialisation is an ongoing thing) but all she will do is eat a kong on a mat while I read the paper, and that's it. There isn't a need for a puppy to be doing stuff all the time. They would like to be doing stuff all the time, but it's a bit of a life lesson that, mostly, dogs don't get to do stuff all the time. Puppies get easier when they grow up a bit and realise that. You can play with your pup - that does not involve ball throwing. You can sit on the floor and play with her (yup, you get bitten, quite a lot ), you can invent things to do together. Try enrichment boxes: cardboard box packed with paper, empty loo rolls, bits of kibble. Feed her in kongs and kong toys. Introduce her to new experiences - textures, things that tip, things to walk along, balance on, and strange objects. Plus all the impulse control (zen bowls etc), sit, down, stand, recall, hand touch, go to mat, stay, release cues, sit on a placeboard, heel, pivot at heel, etc - I don't have enough hours in the day for it all!
This reminded me of something my dog used to do when he was on very short lead walks and we turned for home. The restrictions an older dog faces are similar I think to a high energy puppy taking these very short few minute walks. Patricia McConnell wrote a blog about it - walks that are only long enough for the dog to get 'into' it then they end: http://www.patriciamcconnell.com/theotherendoftheleash/just-enough-exercise-to-wake-up-our-dogs
