# Croc-a-poo



## bigbigblue (Aug 10, 2021)

We are experienced dog owners (border collies and a collie cross) and have recently got a gorgeous all black girl cockapoo, named Lola, who is now 20 weeks old. Lola is walked at least twice a day and played with in between walks. She has lots of legal chew toys which are always close at hand and has a crate with comfy bedding in it.
For most of the day Lola is super chilled and displays good manners (she will sit and wait when asked). She enjoys a cuddle and a stroke and is quite happy dozing away on her bed.
THEN, every evening at around 7pm (and always around that time). Our lovely, docile Cockapoo turns into a possessed croc-a-poo. In this mode Lola nips hands, bites ankles, pulls at clothes, races around like a lunatic leaping on and off furniture, grabbing any 'treasure' she can find, and giving it a good chew. The unwanted behaviours are ALMOST exclusively aimed at my poor wife, but if I intervene, Lola will turn her wrath on me. This hyper active behaviour can last for hours, in fact last night it went on for 3.5 hours before we gave up trying to relax and watch TV and went to bed. 
We have (and continue to use) positive training methods in an attempt to teach her good manners, but we don't seem to be making any progress with this particular behavioural issue. If we remove ourselves from her, or remove her from us, the result is constant loud and frantic whining and barking until she is reunited with us. The nipping etc then resumes.
We are at our wits end. Any advice as to how to deal with this situation would be very much appreciated, especially any techniques to calm her down when in croc-a-poo mode, as she seems to become massively over stimulated and over excited and thus not open to taking on board any training.
Although this behaviour is accompanied by playful body language, it is very wearing on the humans and we now dread the evenings! It is beginning to affect our relationship with Lola.
Any help you can offer will be very gratefully received.


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## 2ndhandgal (Aug 29, 2011)

Grabbing and hoarding of treasure sounds a little like the beginning of resource guarding or at the very least learning that things folk want is much more valuable than anything else in the world and is behaviour my collie cross would never have dreamed of but my cockapoo delights in. 

Make sure there is nothing in the room that you are in the least bit bothered about being chewed (if necessary use puppy panels to protect some stuff and put dummy stuff you are not bothered about) and ignore the theft. Have baby gate on the door and if biting of humans happens step out of the room for 30 seconds and then back in - and repeat as long as necessary. 

Is she getting enough sleep? They are livewires and can easily be extra hyper if they are not getting enough sleep.


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## bigbigblue (Aug 10, 2021)

2ndhandgal,
Thanks for the reply. I don't think resource guarding will be an issue as Lola will happily allow us to take anything off her. She just seems to like the 'game' of stealing the humans stuff....
She gets loads of sleep too. Sleeps 8-9 hours straight at night, then dozes all day (well until around 7pm anyway).


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## Dig (Dec 27, 2018)

Hi, this made me smile with remembrance as your description was exactly what we went through. Digby, also all black, is now almost 3 but around that age he was so similar and we experienced the same emotions. We definitely had moments when we thought it would never get any better. I totally agree with 2ndhandgals advice. Keep ‘stuff’ out of her reach, and really downplay it if she does manage to get something. We used a swap command which he got to really love and would actively seek out treasures and bring them to us for a treat! They are so clever 😂. We found that even a short time out when we removed ourselves from the situation was really helpful, as was a kong or similar filled with cream cheese or anything that would need him to settle down to enjoy and effectively soothe and calm down. My advice would be to stick with your training and believe that this stage will pass. Our Digby is such a chilled dog now - he still has his moments where excitement gets the better of him but he responds well to being ignored. Our other dog is a maltipoo and when he gets over excited he responds well to his slip lead being popped on and he seems to find it reassuring and settles next to me. Hang in there and good luck


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## Nancy&Lola (Jan 28, 2021)

Boy I'm I gonna help you! We have a one year old, also named Lola (red) that does the exact same thing at about the exact time in the evening. Here is what we do....get a can, Coke or what ever and put a nickel in it. Shake it briefly when this behavior starts and your Lola should calm down as our Lola sure does. Simple as that!


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## 2ndhandgal (Aug 29, 2011)

A much better way than using something aversive like a rattle can is to teach a positive interrupter like this


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## bigbigblue (Aug 10, 2021)

2ndhandgal, thank you for the video link. I had heard of the use of a rattle can, but I have never used one with any of our dogs. We want to use only positive training methods with Lola and the use of a rattle can does not fit in with that.


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## 2ndhandgal (Aug 29, 2011)

Positive training all the way for me too - the only way I have ever used a rattle can is for potential guarders - fill the can with treats, rattle and then scatter the treats for the dog to go and eat them all up - a nice way of getting pups away from stolen stuff for long enough for you to go and retrieve it without drawing attention to what they have stolen


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## Evelyn_New_Jersey (May 7, 2020)

bigbigblue said:


> We are experienced dog owners (border collies and a collie cross) and have recently got a gorgeous all black girl cockapoo, named Lola, who is now 20 weeks old. Lola is walked at least twice a day and played with in between walks. She has lots of legal chew toys which are always close at hand and has a crate with comfy bedding in it.
> For most of the day Lola is super chilled and displays good manners (she will sit and wait when asked). She enjoys a cuddle and a stroke and is quite happy dozing away on her bed.
> THEN, every evening at around 7pm (and always around that time). Our lovely, docile Cockapoo turns into a possessed croc-a-poo. In this mode Lola nips hands, bites ankles, pulls at clothes, races around like a lunatic leaping on and off furniture, grabbing any 'treasure' she can find, and giving it a good chew. The unwanted behaviours are ALMOST exclusively aimed at my poor wife, but if I intervene, Lola will turn her wrath on me. This hyper active behaviour can last for hours, in fact last night it went on for 3.5 hours before we gave up trying to relax and watch TV and went to bed.
> We have (and continue to use) positive training methods in an attempt to teach her good manners, but we don't seem to be making any progress with this particular behavioural issue. If we remove ourselves from her, or remove her from us, the result is constant loud and frantic whining and barking until she is reunited with us. The nipping etc then resumes.
> ...


I think your pup is experiencing a daily burst of youthful pent-up energy and she is desperate to play and run. My dog does the same thing, in the evenings, just when I want to relax. If you think about it, in the wild, many animals become active in the evening after sleeping all day, so I think this is natural part of our dogs' cycle and not a misbehavior. I try to take my dog to the dog park in late afternoon/early evening to burn off some of this energy and set myself up for a quieter evening. While it can be frustrating for the owner, I imagine it's equally frustrating for a young dog especially, who wants to run and play. I'm old now  but remember that feeling of being a kid and just wanting to RUN and be wild. I'm pretty sure that's what our dogs are experiencing.


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## bigbigblue (Aug 10, 2021)

Thanks to everyone for the replies. I just hope we can find a way to tolerate her behaviour, teach her good manners and come out the other side with a calm and well mannered cockapoo!


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## WinCockapoo6 (Aug 19, 2021)

We used to call this the witching hour 😂 although sounds much longer in your case! Our puppy did the exact same thing. I’m not sure how big yours is, but we used to pick our puppy up and carry her around showing her around the house (bit like rocking a baby and walking around calming it!) and just using the words calm while we did it. The distraction of being high up so she could see things she couldn’t normally and the calming voice seemed to stop the crazy behaviour almost instantly and calm would be resumed! After a few weeks of this she stopped this behaviour completely.


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