Our 15 month Springer Spaniel continues to dig under the back yard fence and chase squirrels. He's also been aggressive to us when he usually isn't. What can we do?

Question

I have a 15-month-old male (not neutered yet) English Springer spaniel. This dog has been a sweet lovable member of our family since he was 8 weeks old. He gets a lot of exercise, love and kisses and attention and discipline. The last 3 days or so, we notice his intense need to get at the many squirrels in our yard, so much so that he has dug under the yard and escaped chasing the Squirrels down the street. He has done this several times in the last days or so. He doesn't seem interested in birds, kids, cars, anything except the Squirrels. He barks incessantly at them in such frustration. He has never dug under the fence before this week. Now he won't stop. We yell at him to ?stop barking,? it doesn't help. Yesterday after a particularly annoying day of him escaping (we're repairing the fence, but not fast enough) and barking and us yelling at him, he laid down on the bed and began chewing on a new bone I bought him. He seemed quite content to chew. My teenage daughter and her friend went over to pet him on his head and he growled a long, deep growl. When my husband saw this (the dog LOVES and respects my husband) he went over to yell at him "no" for growling. The dog growled at him the same way and then went to attack my husband , he did not bite him but tried to. This is a behavior we have never ever seen in this dog. He is friendly to all, we can handle his food, his mouth, his paws, anything. This time he was afraid we were going to take the bone away. A combination of the intense squirrel chasing and this deep scary growling all in the last week, has left us all very worried. Any ideas from you as to what is going on with him?

Thank you,
Janet

Accepted Answer

This is a perfect example of dog owners who don't understand dog behavior and not having the experience to solve the problem. There are several things going on at one time:

1. This dog is reaching maturity. In the past he would have accepted correction from your husband because he saw him as a pack leader. This is changing (because of a lack of obedience training). Now the dog is prepared to challenge the authority of the family members and is willing to fight to do so.

2. You have a hunting dog. Good hunting dogs have a lot of prey drive and this dog has focused his prey on the squirrels. The fact that he has figured out how to dig under the fence and you haven’t figured out how to stop him is a handler problem and not a dog problem. This is only compounded by the fact that you do not have the dog obedience-trained. If you did, telling him “NO” would have stopped him.

3. You can stop the digging by getting an Innotek Fence and attaching it to your existing fence. This will keep the dog back away from the fence and in the yard. The wire is attached to your fence (rather than being buried). The only place it's buried is at the gate. You can read about these fences on my web site.

The dog needs some serious obedience training. Read what I have written about the correct steps to this on my web in the description of Basic Dog Obedience. Also get a prong collar and train this dog. Read the article on my web site called Dealing With the Dominant Dog. You can find it in the list of training articles.

Unless you do the things I have listed your problems will only continue and it will only be a matter of time before this dog bites someone. When that happens it will not be because of the dog but because the owners did not take the proper steps to correct a behavior problem.