Yeah. A lot of folk around here will object to “dominance” discipline, but I’m with you. A dog MIGHT get away with biting me once.
This I don’t get. The dog is supposed to enhance your life, not detract from it. If you truly have been trying for 5 months, and this dog is not housebroken and is biting you repeatedly and acting aggressively towards other dogs, either you are doing something horribly wrong, or the dog has something wrong with it. I’d get rid of the dog.
Username/post combo of the day.
mmm
I applaud your post (and I agree with you). If this dog is a threat to people who are just walking by, its a serious problem.
Are they really? My mother had one for fifteen years, he was a complete reprobate. Mom is disabled and trains her dogs to bring in the newspaper - this one would do so and not drop the paper until the expected treat was in sight. Then throughout the day he would steal other things off tables - mail, paperbacks, homework - and hold those hostage as well until he was bought off with a treat.
Cockers spaniels are one of the worst about biting.
Haha! My dog (German Shepherd) sometimes decides to pick up a “stick” (read: tree) and thrash all around with it, running by me on the path and nearly taking me out with it. Not wanting to be mean and make her give up her fun, I would offer her a trade - leave the stick and I’ll give you a cookie instead.
This arrangement worked well until one day I saw her go up to a giant stick, put her paw on it and then look at me. Then I realized how well she had trained me 
Aww, I can’t think badly of a GSD. My last one would rearrange my backyard all the time, especially the rocks.
Mom’s little dog knew he was doing wrong though, and like the OP said, didn’t give a damn. He’d steal something and duck and weave all over the place, just out of reach, just a little faster than she could move around. I could catch him, but I’d about knock myself out diving under a table or something, then he’d bite me. :rolleyes:
This thread doesn’t have any pictures, which I’m pretty sure is illegal. Here is my beast when we were out on our walk, today:
waves hello I’m the friend who advised LadyMondegreen to post here. Just as I expected, there’s loads of great advice. Thanks, everyone.
Question for the OP: where did you get this dog? was it from a reliable breeder? a rescue? Did you see the parents? at least the mother? I know you are in the UK, but you probably have something that is the equivalent to US “backyard breeders.” They produce unreliable dogs that often have personality defects from inbreeding, overbreeding the mother, or not paying attention to what traits the parents’ have other than that superficially, they look OK. Is it possible that despite your best efforts, you got slipped a backyard breeder dog? they are sometimes called “puppy mills” in the US as well. I don’t know a UK term.
That doesn’t condemn your dog-- I know people who have rescued puppy mill dogs, and they have worked out. But he might take more work.
Neutering him won’t alter his personality in that, if he likes a particular toy, he will hate that toy afterwards, or if he likes a particular food, he will reject it, or his sleep patterns will change, or anything like that, but in male dogs, it does reduce aggression, because they are not driven to compete for mates (and yes, he is old enough for that). Also, he won’t run up to other dogs, ignoring recall to such an extent, because he won’t have the mating drive.
I had a pronged collar for my Pit/GSD cross. She was boundless energy as a puppy, and a young dog. When she was around eight months old, I wondered sometimes if I’d made a mistake getting her; she was the ADHD dog at obedience school. But by the time she was two, she was the best behaved dog on the block. By three, she knew about 100 words, and would walk up to people and sit at their feet when she wanted to be pet. People wouldn’t understand what she wanted, and when I’d explain, they’d say they never saw such a “polite” dog before. By four she had a large repertoire of tricks.
I was afraid to use the prong collar at first, but it worked miracles with her. Plus, prong collars close only to a certain point, unlike choke collars, which keep closing, and can literally choke a dog. Prong collars are a better attempt to duplicate what a mother dog does than a choke collar is.
This be true. I did lots of research, and while Pit Bulls unfortunately get falsely “credited” with bites that aren’t there’s (in one study, it turned out that some police officers thought “pit bull” was a synonym for “vicious dog,” and not shorthand for a type of breed, so any dog that bit was a “pit bull” in their reports, even it it was really a Border Collie). Anyway, the breed with the most bites in several studies was the Cocker Spaniel, although because they are small, their bites did not need medical attention as often as the bites of bigger dogs, so it took a lot of research to track down this fact. It came from interviewing breeders at shows and asking how many had been “nipped, bit, or [some other word I don’t remember]” by their dog, and how often.
As you can see from my picture above, I use a prong collar for Hannah. It’s a bit embarrassing because I worry that people see it and assume it’s because she’s vicious but she’s not.
It’s good in situations where I need complete control of her, like if there are shrieking children running around which she finds super enticing. A quick “snap” on the collar reminds her to walk quietly, calmly and with no barking. The collar doesn’t stay tight but just makes a quick biting feeling around her neck, like a adult dog disciplining a puppy.
In the picture you can see that it’s very loose around her neck when she’s off leash. I don’t trust choke chains because they can tighten and stay tight even when there is nothing pulling on it.
This and this.
Right now you, the human, are the prisoner of a psychopathic dog. That is a deeply defective situation. Fix it.
A the first real bite the dog would have been seriously injured if I was the bitee, whether or not the dog was mine. At the second I would have killed it on the spot. Euthanasia my ass; I’d have disemboweled it with my bare hands.
You owe yourself, your neighbors, and their children an attack-free dog. Fix this today.
Not a dog owner or expert but I think there are times when you have to step back and look at the big picture. I realize there is the impulse to save a dog if possible but a dog behaving like the one you mention is not only going to be handful personally but a huge legal liability. Some people are hyper aggressive assholes and I’d imagine some dogs are like this as well. If the goal here is to have a companionable animal you have huge amounts of work to be done that may not even take long term.
I’m not clear how the law works in the UK re biting animals but in the US even a nip against another person or their dog could cost you hundreds to many, many thousands of dollars. I would not be willing to take that risk with a non-cooperative dog.
This.
Let me clarify that by “fix this” I don’t necessarily mean you must have the dog killed.
What I mean is you ought to take it *today *to a kennel that can host the dog and has the expertise to assess the dog for re-habituation. And if they think they can succeed, they you must spend what it takes to have them re-habituate the dog while it lives at their kennel. Then once the dog “graduates” (or flunks out) have the courage and integrity to honestly assess whether they succeeded, or whether you have an incorrigible case on your hands. An incorrigible case would need to be killed.
Or you can save a lot of time, money, and heartache: simply have this dog killed today and get a non-defective replacement dog. The choice is yours.
Either way, put the dog in a crate and don’t let it out until you’ve solved this. It doesn’t belong loose in your home and certainly not on a leash nor running loose in public like it is.
As people here sometimes say about other people: “When someone shows/tells you who they really are, it’s your job to listen carefully.”
This. You simply cannot have a dog that bites and especially one off collar.
You aren’t in danger of becoming that person, you are that person. You need to take care of it now.
Is he deaf, or mostly so? Have you carefully tested this?
Okay.
[ol]
[li]Stop the off-leash parks. Your dog is not ready for them[/li][li]You may need to muzzle for a time. [/li][li]Are you crate-training? [/li][li]What did you try to curb the nipping originally? [/li][/ol]
I’m in the “biting dogs aren’t acceptable” camp
Neuter first, if that doesn’t work I’d have it put down and try again.
No cite handy, but I’ve read that cocker statistics are swayed by a popularity spike that occurred (in the 70s?), coupled with an incredible predisposition to painful ear infections. People reach for the dog’s head to pet it and it bites.
In regards to the value of professional trainers, I’ve mentioned our old dog Ella before.
She was a five year old dog in a shelter, facing euthanasia after being adopted out, then returned, numerous times. We decided to give her a try, knowing that she would be put down if we brought her back.
After a couple of weeks we were ready to throw in the towel. She was aggressive toward strangers (especially little, old, greyhaired ladies), and was scaring me as well. I talked with a friend who is a cop and a master trainer. He came over with his bite suit and we worked with the dog. He identified some subtle mistakes we were making (tensing up when approaching a stranger was one). He suggested daily exercises and we worked her hard.
We intensified our training efforts. Gradually things began improving. Today, eight years later, I could walk her off lead through a busy playground and she’d never give me reason for concern. She is nearly perfect, other than her continued hatred of old women and a fear of thunderstorms. I’ve treated minor wounds, trimmed her nails, etc. It would be interesting to find out what fucked her up early in life.
