You know you got a working breed of dog right? Rant incoming.

If you own a working breed of dog such as a working cocker spaniel, springer, lab, pointer, collie, german shepherd etc. Then you will have probably had someone say something condescending to you about it. Unless you live on a farm and actually "work" the dog.

Quite a few people (mostly professionals, vets and trainers) when they see two women in their twenties struggling with their working breed spaniel seem to assume that we had no idea what we were getting into. That we just picked a dog without any consideration of the breed and what it likes to do. They will say things like "You know she is a working dog?" "She is high energy, did you not expect that?" "Working breeds really should be working". Erm yes. We did know that we were getting a high energy working breed of dog. We wanted a dog who could go on adventures with us whether that was paddleboarding, long walks, beach trips, woodland walks. We wanted a dog that could keep up and would love it. Hence a working cocker spaniel.

We were fully prepared for long daily walks, for lots of training. We spent hundreds of pounds on training, we took her to 1-2-1 gundog training to learn the ropes and provide her with the ability to do what she was born to do. We have trained her to do scent work. We are doing agility type play with her at the moment. This spaniel has every outlet covered.

Unfortunately for us, Roo's anxiety means she can't do a lot of the these things at the moment. Her obsessiveness means gundog work is not really an option at the moment. Retrieving can cause her to become over-aroused, she will become obsessed and not in a good way with the dummies. We used to spend an hour a day working her in the field but now we limit this to 5 to 10 minutes a day in the garden. Sometimes, 20 minutes in the field once a week.

We understand that not everyone is aware of what they are getting themselves into but it is down right rude to assume we are having issues with our dog because we didn't know what were getting.