Me and my partner got our golden Toby around 10 days ago and he's absolutely nailing most things. I would says he's pretty much potty trained, he goes to the back door and whines or barks when he wants out and we haven't had any accidents in days now. Crate training has been a breeze, he barely ever cries now. He's also a very smart boy, he's already learnt sit, down and paw.
There has just been a couple of problems developing. He humps, a lot! His bed, my feet, my curtains! I wasn't expecting the humping for another couple of weeks. When we try and stop him he growls sometimes. He also keeps jumping up at the sofa or at us to nip at us and we are struggling to teach him 'off'. I will try and distract him with a toy but he is just too interested in lunging at me to try and bite me. When he comes back in from peeing outside he is often quite wet and muddy so we try to dry his feet with a towel, half of the time he is fine, I give him a treat and then its done. But if he is in hyper mood he will snarl and snap to bite us, sometimes quite hard. If he gets too carried away sometimes we will put him in his crate for 'time out'.
I know that he is just a puppy and he may grow out of these behaviours, but I am a big worrier, and part of me is worried that this aggressive behaviour will carry into adulthood. We are both first time dog owners so any advice, even critical, will be very much appreciated.
First: I have just seen, from your most recent comment, that your pup was considered to be the "leader of the pack". This means he's assertive and bossy. Since you're a first-time dog owner, I'm surprised your breeder felt he was a good match for you, because this type of pup can be a real handful, needs a lot of human input to function well in the early months and years, and would normally have been matched with an experienced owner.
What your pup needs is consistency and firmness, and a lot of training. Right now, he's being bratty because he can. While some of this is normal puppy behaviour, the snapping and snarling is not. It's not aggression, it's brattiness and him trying to boss you around (and succeeding). I'd suggest (strongly) that you get yourselves into formal training, quickly. Find a school with a good reputation, one that uses positive methods, and sign yourselves up for a puppy class. The puppy class should focus on training humans to train dogs. This will give you the tools you need. After puppy class, get yourselves into a formal obedience class. Obedience training helps you to build a relationship with the dog where you're in charge, not him. It's important to do this with an assertive dog. Training is a lot more than just teaching a dog to "sit" or "lie down"; it's building the type of relationship where your dog looks to you for leadership.
Humping is often considered to be dominance-related and can indicate over-stimulation too. It is something that needs to be stopped, especially as he's doing it such a lot and resisting your interventions. When he starts humping, either pick him up and put him in his crate, or give him an alternative activity in the form of a short training session. If he growls, put him in the crate right away.
For the jumping, lunging and biting, don't give him a toy: if your timing is off, you might in fact be rewarding the behaviour, not redirecting it, or you might be giving him the impression that it's a game. Instead, give him a short training session. I would suggest that you have him wear a short leash in the house (
but only when you're actually with him - never leave him unattended with the leash on because he could hurt himself). When he starts lunging or jumping, grab the leash to get him under control, and when he's calm, have him do a series of commands and reward him when he complies. If he doesn't calm down, or doesn't engage in the training, put him in the crate and leave him there for a while.
For the snarling, biting and snapping, put him straight in the crate. You shouldn't tolerate this behaviour at all when you're trying to dry him with the towel, because it will spread to other handling situations - nail clipping, ear cleaning, brushing, etc. He doesn't get to choose when these things happen and when they don't.
Pups like this are a handful, more so than mellow pups, but once you've got a handle on them they become great companions. Don't be discouraged - assertive doesn't mean aggressive, it just means he needs more human input and effort to accept the rules of the human world. It really is only a question of learning how to train him. A good training school - or a good one-on-one trainer - will help you with this.
As an aside, I do agility with my dogs, and I would be more than happy with this type of pup because they grow into confident dogs that will tackle any challenge you throw at them. My last Golden (the one in my signature photo) was like this, and she became the most amazing agility partner. But she was a real handful as a puppy and adolescent - most memorably, she broke through a closed window to get at a squirrel outside. There was glass everywhere. Thankfully she was ok ... I have other memories of her using a picnic table full of food as a springboard to jump over our 4' pool fence and "retrieve" the children who were swimming ...
