Hi All,
Both my husband and i have sadly lost our beloved dogs in the last few months, he went out straight away and got another dog (springer spaniel) i decided to wait a few weeks to see how i felt.
Now i am looking for a bit of advice on our two new two puppies, one is a spaniel, male, 16 weeks old. The other i just got is a labrador, female, 11 weeks old.
The springer spaniel has been hyperactive since we got him but we have been taking him to puppy classes for the last 3 weeks and he is responding really well to comands - the hyper activity is still there and i guess it always will be as its in his breeding. The Labrador is very quiet but not shy and due to her breed is not that much smaller than the spaniel at the moment.
Its been 14 years since i had a "pup" and i only had one on its own so not sure if these two are behaving normally or not.
The spainel is VERY dominant and NOISY when playing, he is relentless in his chase of the labrador and just wont stop annoying her unless we separate them, i know they should play bite each other and rough play will happen etc but there is a hell of a lot of yelping going on............i wish i could upload a video of them just so you could see and hear whats going on.......he will mount pin her down and really growl non stop while biting and no matter how much we say no to him he carries on until we take him to another room, im sure this will give him a heart attack as his heart is pumping like crazy all this time. I can usually only stand the comotion for 5 minutes and then i separate them as it too rough and by that time the lab has had enough and tries to defend herself and becomes quite aggressive to him and they have both accidentally bitten me while they have been doing this playing. The last thing i want to do is to make any of them turn aggressive and would like to stop this now.

how long do i leave them to act like this before separating them?? does anyone think this could lead to adult aggression???

he is also snappy if she goes anywhere near food even though they have separate bowls/water and they dont have to compete for food, so i put up a safety gate between rooms and have been feeding them separately but together by each side of the gate to let him see that he dont have to stress about her trying to go for his food....this has been working ok but i dont know if this was a good idea or not??????

I really would not like to have to put the new puppy to another home, i have always had labs since i was a child and i just dont want to be without one.

any advice much appreciated!!

Linda

Hi, you do need to give each puppy alone time and one to one training. Using the gate to confine one to another room while you play/train with the other then swapping.
At that age I guess rough play is normal but they also need to learn when itis appropriate if atall. ou could do this by teaching them to be calm in the house and giving then chews to lie down with.

When I had my litter of pupies running around my house if they were getting to rough or too much the trouble maker was put back to bed early. They were quite content to explore or lie with toys and chews.

Encourage them to play with toys more and interact, as the trouble with having 2 puppies at the same time is that they can bond to eachother and not you so just make sure you make the time to have a good portion of one to one with each dog every day.

x

__________________

How strange you have one of each puppy what my boy has mixed in him lol Cybi's daddy was a lab and mummy was a springer

__________________