My Cockapoo (English Cocker Spaniel x Miniature Poodle) used to do that on walks when we first starting walking her when she was a few months old. We could hardly get her to walk down the road and she used to keep on stopping and pining to go home again. However all it took was some training, some treats and some perseverance and she now loves going for walks and meeting other dogs. We let her off the lead now and she has never really run off from us and loves playing with other dogs.

I understand from reading the Gumtree thread and from the poster above that you have since sold your puppy.
I don't think it is fair to say that you should never have a dog again, but if you ever think of getting another animal, please do your research first! It took us months to decide whether or not to get a dog and in that time we read plenty of books and researched all the different breeds until we found the one which was right for us. We knew that when we got our puppy training was an essential part and if you aren't committed in putting the time and effort in for that, then there is no point in buying an animal, as it wouldn't have a good life and would be hard for you to cope with too.

Poor dog, I hate to see this sort of thing happen, when the owner does not consider the breed and then when it is hard work, sell it like a thing to someone on an online trading site I hope the new owners are more considerate and hope the dog is not used for puppy farming or something as awful.

I know, i just hope to god the puppy goes to a loving home, i think there are so many risks by just putting it up for sale on a site like Gumtree.

A five/six month old unspeyed pedigree bitch?

Guess you are thinking what I am - Perfect for a puppy farm or BYB.

This is why you should do research first and only by from a good breeder who will take the pup back or a good rescue who'll do likewise.

Whats BYB?
I really hope the OP reads these posts before they post an advert on Gumtree to sell the puppy & try to find a better way to rehome her.

Back yard breeder.

I know numerous spaniel rescues that will have owners waiting for a dog like this to come in. It equally breaks my heart and absolutely enrages me to know that a young pup like this may have been sold/given away on Gumtree.

OP - if you haven't rehomed your dog, please pm me and I will personally put you in touch with reputable springer rescues that will take this pup, no questions asked and ensure that it goes to only the best home. If not, someone earlier in the thread mentioned CAESSR - i can personally recommend this rescue as we adopted a dog from them in September. Please do not use Gumtree or the likes.

was going to suggest taking her to a park/beach and letting her run, rather than taking her out round the block. they are working dogs, they need to run.

I got a jackadoodle the same week, and he HATES the wind and refuses to walk when its windy (great when its been like this for weeks!!) he walks on the lead any other time but won't during windy times, so I take him to the park, plonk him down and walk off - he soon follows (and its a secure park!) and has even started exploring a little...so we are getting there.

**I do take him to the park on non-windy days too!

but I see from the post above that your selling her. I'm really dissapointed. Why would you get a dog and then give up on it after 3 months? Did you not research the breed? To me thats like having a kid and handing it back because it makes too much noise.

I really hope the OP reads this thread & see's your advice.
It really does break my heart that a young puppy might end up being used to breed or end up in a bad home due to being quickly sold on an online website.

I feel a bit harsh & guilty for posting my rant about how the OP shouldn't get another dog. But it really does just enrage me that people don't look into breeds of dog & realise just how much hard work they can be.
They should become part of the family & not just be given up on

Would suggest Shadow2009 if you still read these pages, but I fear not.

To contact springerrescue.org.uk

If it's your first dog sometimes you don't know what it's going to be like.
When we got wincey she was a little pup.
The neighbour said he'd got these pups some woman didn't want and she was going to drown them, and we at the time were thinking about getting a rescue dog, so this was a perfect opportunity.

I'd had a dog when i was a teenager, so i thought, yeh I've had dogs before, i'll be ok.

What I forgot was my mum did a lot of the work.

So of course I was faced with dog hair covered floors, falling over her whilst cooking (literary!)

My mum had a dog once but after a while she realised she was allergic and had to re-home him.

What I'm saying is don't assume the OP don't give a crap.
You can't research children, they are all different same as dogs I guess. You can only do so much.

I appreciate what your saying, however i feel if the OP had properly researched the breed of dog they would have known how lively this specific breed of dog can be.
They are notoriously energetic dogs that need plenty of stimulation & exercise.
Taking on a puppy shouldn't be done lightly & i would suggest that people take months / years looking into what breed of dog would best suit them.

I didn't mean to be so harsh to the OP but i sometimes feel people just take in puppies on a whim without properly looking into all the facts.

My family dog is a huskamute who is extremely hard work & the previous owners had adopted him because of their love of the film "white fang" .

I know what you're saying.

We had a cocker spaniel when i was 10 and he was lovely but then one day he changed, started growling, barking at everyone, a very angry dog. I remember my mum had to tie him up. It turned out he had some sort of disease that was sending him mad or something. It was such a long time ago.
He got put down in the end

He was called Bertie, I love any spaniels, mind you not keen on king charles tho

Cocker Spaniels are prone to something called Rage Syndrome. Sounds like that's what Bertie had.

Hi everyone,

The dog was more than just being "naughty". We've had since Halloween and she's STILL been biting aggresively (she's bit my sister, 8 years old, on the cheek and we all have vicious bite marks on our arms). Not only that, but she still howls the house down and scratches at the doors when left alone in a room for even two minutes (and we have tried to be consistant but there's only so much noise and damage you can take) and as our close family are refusing to visit the house because of her (my aunt has a 3 year old boy and a newborn baby) and the fact the puppy isn't improving at all, we decided it was best for HER to be re-homed. We only have a small house with a small garden anyway, and as springers are very energetic dogs it's probably fairer if she went to a home where there's more room for her to run around and enjoy her life.

We did advertise her on Gumtree and she is being picked up tomorrow at 10:30am. She is being sold to a man from Glasgow, who claims to have experience with dogs. He lives with his wife, who works from home, and they apparently have a big house and garden. He visited us yesterday and the puppy loved him, she was wagging her tail and even lay on his lap while he spoke to us. He seemed like a very nice man and promised to send pictures of her progress to us by email when he takes her home. Of course we're all absolutely crushed we have to sell her, but we felt we didn't have a choice. She was much more demanding than we thought and the risk of her biting one of the younger kids in the family wasn't a risk worth taking. We all sat with her earlier on the living room floor, in tears hugging her and taking pictures with her. Of course she doesn't have a clue what is going on and kept trying to play with us and lick us and jump on us, but we're all crushed. My sister is in bed right now crying her eyes out and keeps begging my Mum and stepdad to keep her. Her and my brother will both be at school when the puppy is taken away so they know that their last chance of seeing her is tomorrow morning before they leave. I will be home, however, and know i'll be crying my eyes out. I'll be worried sick that she'll be treated horribly or that she won't settle in, or she'll be re-homed again, but that's life. We couldn't cope anymore. She wasn't always horrible, about 70% of the time she lay about on the floor chewing her toys and looking up at us with her sad face and whenever we returned home from being out she'd run up to us and jump up and down on our two legs and lick our face off with her tail wagging like mad, but we COULDN'T keep her with the biting she did.

Anyway here's a video I took of her a few weeks ago This is her when she was only two months old, i'm so glad I took it, and know i'll be watching it when she's gone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN-LlDVoqx8

(i'm really sorry and I know I came across like i've put no effort in with her, but we honestly have. We don't WANT to get rid of her, but we need to. She's still the same way she was when I first posted this thread, and even her breeder admitted when she visited that she was "one of a kind". Almost *too* enthusiastic. I'm sorry if you's don't want to hear this but this was our first puppy and was alot different from what we imagined. Should we have thought it through more properly? Absolutely, but we can't go back in time. We feel awful, and we really hope the puppy goes to a good home.)

EDIT - she always growls alot, too. Even if we clap her or rub her belly, she growls like mad and then goes for our hands.

Hi Shadow, thanks for posting your update - i am sorry if i came across as harsh to you
But this kind of situation really does wind me up, however now that i have read your long post & explained about the biting , i can understand more now why you cannot keep the puppy.

I hope that she has found a loving home with this man from Glasgow, i hope he does stick to his word & keep you upto date on her progress.

Hi.

It's okay, it would wind me up, too. I'm dissapointed with myself and the family for "giving up" and we're ashamed of ourselves for putting the puppy through all this re-homing nonsense, but we all make mistakes and hopefully we've learn from ours.

I will be sure to post when I get any updates from the man. We all liked him but obviously we're wondering how genuine he is underneath.

Please don't. I really mean that. I am literally pleading with you not to let her go. You know nothing about this man apart from what he has told you.

Wherever you are, transport can be arranged for this puppy to get a foster place, with rescue back-up asap.

It's not my decision to make, unfortunately. It's my mum and stepdad's.

I assure you the man seemed very genuine. It sounds bad because i'm saying "the man" which obviously is quite discomforting, but obviously we sat with him and spoke to him. He was quite young, he works as an events promoter (or something) and he even gave us his address if we ever wanted to visit. I even done some Facebook stalking (it sounds awful, I know) and he seems very normal. Nothing suspicious on his page at all.

Please don't make me feel any worse about this.

This is a geniune concern & i agree with ejm the poster above saying to not let the puppy go with him. Yes he could be a very geniune man who has experience, HOWEVER he might not be, and he might be a breeder - It's not too late to stop this man picking her up, i think it may be better for her to be rehomed using a spaniel rescue centre where they will do home visits (i would think anyway) to make sure that this young puppy gets a geniune loving home.

Just think about it this way, how will you feel if you never ever hear from this man again once he has taken your dog away?

Sorry to worry you like this Shadow, but i think it is a cause for concern when giving dogs away on sites like Gumtree.

My only concern is for the dog

I have sympathy for when people need to give up their pets because everyone makes mistakes and if your a first time owner you can do all the research in the world but you cant predict every how outcome.

However how you and your family have handled the situation is not right and down to wanting to make a return on your investment in the first place. If you are ever Privately giving away your pet the responcible thing to do is visit the home of the new owner, its very easy for a bdb to put on a smiley face and play happily with a dog in your front room and gumtree i wont even get started. Dogs arent a commodity.

Probably too late in posting but nothing wrong with sending a dog to a rescue, even if you lose the 300-450 quid you paid for the pedigree, its not th dogs fault.

Kinda reminds me of how we inherited Connie, our spaniel.

A neighbour has angina (I think) and his doctor suggested he get a dog and walk it for excercise.
He bought the spaniel, took it for one walk and suffered a heart-attack so they decided to get rid of her.

When we heard about it they brought the puppy around to show us and she sniffed around the living room, sniffed at my Labrador then just curled up next to the lab', in her basket.

At that point I just said "I guess she's staying".
They looked a bit shocked and started muttering about how we hadn't discussed money yet but as far as I was concerned she'd already moved in.

Must say, my spaniel was a total PITA for the first year or more.
She's smart and happy but downright stubborn and if we tried to make her do anything that she didn't want to do she would deliberately and willfully try to destroy the thing that was in her way.
She'd bite, chew, howl, bark, growl, fight with my Lab' and generally cause mayhem.

To me, that's just part of owning a dog though.
Even my Lab' (one of the most obedient, placid dogs you could ever meet) once chewed a hole through a wall in my house when she was bored as a puppy!

5 years later she's part of the furniture. Trustworthy, calm, obedient, inquisitive and smart.

No real point but I think all potential dog owners should expect the worst and accept that it's up to THEM to mold their puppy into the pet that they want.

Did you contact the breeder you got her from? Good breeders will advise, and take back cats and dogs if there really is a problem. Of course you may well have to give back the purchase price as well. I would have been much more comforable if she was neutered before being rehomed, young though she is - no BYBs would be interested in a neutered bitch.

If the OPs mum and step dad are happy with this guy then that is their decision, you have offered advice but they are doing what they think is best. I applaud the OP for coming back on here and letting us know what is happening. My brother-in-laws 7 month old working springer dog was up at new year in he is a right handful but I was very firm with him and my cross breed terrier and they reacted well to it – that and the very long walks. Both dogs are pining for each other though so we will have to get them back together soon.

The breeder has visited several times (she was a friend of my Mum's anyway) and said that out of all the puppies she's visited, ours was by far the most "mental". Unfortunately the breeder already had to take back two puppies (one who was being beaten by their new owner and one who's owner died the next day) and since she already has three other dogs of her own, plus two kids and a job, we didn't think it was fair to ask her to take back our puppy as well. She actually advised us to put her on Gumtree, and she's done the exact same with her puppies.

We were very anxious about putting her on Gumtree because we've heard what it's like and we know that we'd have to be very careful in who we speak to. We got numerous dodgy emails and phonecalls, but we also got a few decent ones. We'd taken the puppy down to a local village to visit a potential owner, but the puppy was very wary of the woman and refused to go near her. The man who took her away this morning was absolutely lovely. I was VERY suspicious and I think he knew I was observing him to see if he was "faking" it but he honestly seemed fine. My mum told him my sister was upset and we'd really appreciate some photos and emails on her progress, and he seemed to completely understand. I've stalked his Facebook (I know) and he's been at university and is in a comfortable work position. I know this doesn't mean anything but it's not attributes of someone who gets their kicks for abusing dogs or using them as puppy machines. He gave us his address and said we could visit whenever we like.

My mum had to go into the livingroom because she was crying, and my stepdad held the puppy in his arms (who seemed to *know* there was something going on, she'd been quiet all morning and kept sitting in the middle of the floor and looking at us, I swear her eyes were watering at one point and she didn't bark or bite at all) and I gave her a quick hug but had to run upstairs as I was sobbing. I looked out the window, however, and she was sprinting towards his car with her tail wagging. The minute he walked into the house she was jumping on him and licking him. I hope that means she senses he's a good person.

Obviously i'm worried and feel guilty, but it just wasn't fair on her to keep her any longer. We made the mistake of bringing her into our home when we were unprepared and inexperienced, and it's the puppy that is suffering. Of course we feel horrible, but hopefully she'll live a better life now away from us.