Gun dog behaviour: Why is my gun dog an attention seeker?

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Why is my gundog an attention seeker?

If your gun dog is aggressive around food you need to be more dominant.

By Mark Whitehouse

Friday, 30 April 2010

My 18th-month-old spaniel has had a great first shooting season.

The problems are at home where she is very food aggressive and it's not good gun dog behaviour.

When she is in the kennel she barks and whines and continuously paces around the kennel.

All my efforts to keep good condition on this gun dog have failed. Can you help?

I have a gun dog that continuously paces around the kennel and never seems to switch off.

She is also very lean because she is burning energy all the time and this inevitably will cause her to lose condition.

Barking and whining is attention-seeking behaviour and needs to be nipped in the bud.

I am very firm with my young gun dogs between four and six months old.

If they start any barking or whining I will set the hosepipe up outside the kennel.

Once I have given them a firm verbal command to be quiet and to get in the kennel I will switch on the hose and give them a squirt of high pressure water.
This tends to work for me.

On the problem of aggression around food you need to be more dominant and once again you have to be in control.

I would start the following exercise in the garden away from the kennel.

Put the food down and then give a command to ‘leave that’ and move her away from the dish with the food in, then lift the dish up and take the food away.

Repeat this several times while gradually moving closer to the kennel area.

Once again be very firm with your voice and let your gundog know that you are in charge.

For more gun dog training advice click here

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Comments

Dean Porter

Fri, 30th Apr 2010 16:11:55

well i am sorry but i also have Gundogs, mine bark on occassions and also whine, i shout at them and tell them firmly to stop barking, i do not agree with "squirting them with high pressure water" treat the dog the way you would expect to be treated.