Okay folks I need your wisdom here, I'm at my wits end.

Gunnar our female, spayed Boxer/Labrador mix is about 8 months old. Not a great age for pups I know, sort of their teenage time and all that but it's getting ridiculous around here. I'm hoping some of you can offer suggestions so it doesn't get to the point of considering rehoming her.

Gunnar has always been a bit stubborn and hard headed. She's extremely smart but will "argue" commands and is not the nice calm submissive dog we are trying to raise here. It's more than just being a puppy and it's getting worse as she's growing. Here's some of her problems and what we've done to try and resolve things....

1) She will go and urinate on our bed (Mike and mine). This is done very deliberately as she is housetrained (though that was a HUGE struggle...worst pup I've ever had that way). She would go out of her way to go through a number of rooms, down a hallway just to do this! She is no longer allowed in the master bedroom at all due to this. She will then for no reason we can see....occasionally urinate on our couch even if we are right there. Is this a marking behaviour? She is rarely allowed on the couch due to this. It's not just a little bit of pee by the way.

2) She is extremely jealous of anyone in the family paying attention to each other and not her. She will jump up constantly, nose you, paw you (that hurts) and even literally sit on Mikey to stop me cuddling my own son. She's especially jealous if Mike and I dare to try to even sit together to watch a movie. If we put her in her puppy cage, she barks hysterically. When disciplined for barking...she immediately barks louder. It is not a whining type bark, it has tons of dominance and demand to it.

3) She will not leave anyone alone if they have food. This I understand, she is after all a puppy. When we eat however or even snack on chips we have to lock her in the puppy cage which then results in the above loud and constant barking. My Thanksgiving buffet today will be hell *sigh*

4) She fights any type of restraint while walking. I have recently put her in a halter style head collar and she's much improved. She is fighting the halter but that's to be expected. I'm also using it in the house on lead to try and control her dominating me me me behaviours to some success.

5) We have problems having anyone come to our home. She will not stop jumping and demanding attention from the visitor, if we remove her from the room she barks insistently, paws at doors and carpets (and has done damage to both which as a renter isn't good for us). She does jump a lot and is totally uncaring if we try to raised knee thing (she just bounces hard off our knees, and jumps more...hurts our knees more than her I think).

6) We have to keep her puppy cage in a room where she cannot see us because she will not settle in the cage even if she's been out for a walk and loose in the house for hours and hours with us. As soon as she's in the cage it's an all out war to see who is more stubborn. We do have to give in at some point as we do not want complaints to our landlord over her barking, whining and howling. She is however quiet and happy in her cage with her toys while we are at work (so the neighbours tell us...she's so loud they can hear her outside and next door!)

Gunnar isn't a dog that's left alone all that much. Mike and I are often home with her. She's not sitting in a cage day after day or anything like that. She has toys always in there with her when we do have to cage her and her cage is very roomy for her size. Mike was spoiling her a bit but has since realized that is making it worse and is disciplining and correcting her with me but it's just like she's too bullheaded to listen.

We love Gunnar and want some ideas here. She's making our life very difficult right now and we are worried a landlord issue will come up. We cannot tie her outside as an option to the cage as our yard is not fenced and in Toledo we have a lot of dogs stolen for bait dogs for dog fighting. I've had dogs before and always had happy, well trained dogs even as puppies but Gunnar is amazingly stubborn and just doesn't seem to care if she's in trouble. I'd swear she was just not quite smart except the little turd can pick up commands so easily (she learned sit in one 15 minute training session when she was only 4 months old!) Show her a treat and she's Miss Manners but heck I cannot spend my life dispensing dog treats to this spoiled, stubborn brat dog! (sorry I am very frustrated with her today especially)

Sorry for the long post folks.