Advice

I'm looking for a bit of advice, every now and then howie will just look at me or my wife and start barking at us and then biting coming across aggressive is this him trying to be the dominant one and hows best to deal with him. Do we ignore him? Or grab the scruff of his neck and hold him on the floor to show that he's not in charge? Any advice would be welcomed.

Unlikely to be aggression at this age i would distract him with a toy .

sounds like he's demanding your attention, I would just ignore that kind of behaviour

every now and then howie will just look at me or my wife and start barking at us and then biting coming across aggressive

howie probably be just talking to you ..
saying 'hello .. please interact with me'

my Lady barks when she wants to say hello to someone she knows will fuss over her ..
she also .. right after evening meal time .. will go to the opposite end of the room .. nod her head down while giving a muffled bark ..
then play bow and bark out loud ( only IF i look at her ) ..
i know for sure she's saying .. 'play with me now' :-)

biting? .. play biting probably ..
i let Lady do it as she's quite gentle about it now ..

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to stop either the barking or biting ..
be a few write ups on this site how to do it .. kindly ..
( try a site search )
takes time and patience

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what Mia05 wrote ..

Unlikely to be aggression at this age i would distract him with a toy .

+1

Agree with the above. Holding Howie down by the scruff will end up causing more trouble as he won't understand why this is being done. The best way to stop unwanted behavior is by ignoring him completely, Staffy's thrive on human interaction.

Definitely no scruffing/pinning! Our brains are much bigger than our dogs - use yours to train your puppy with rewards and boundaries. Ignore all of this "dominance" stuff, it's not relevant when training domesticated dogs. You're living with a dog, not a wolf! Gwen Bailey writes some great books about puppy training

Best to ignore or distract with a toy. Definately not aggression.

I'm going to go against gain the grain and say when my boy does this (to me only never my husband) I ignore him and walk away, sometimes he follows me and will jump up or put himself right in front of me as I walk, if he does that I do grab him and calm him by making him sit, then shake his paw with me so he understands we're back on friends level. I find it really helps. It's attention seeking.

The only thing I'd add is that, if you do go down the distract with a toy route, you need to be careful that he doesn't end up thinking that this behaviour gets you to play with him. I'd tweak this method slighly by teaching 'no' in a nice way, getting a positive reaction, then playing with him as a reward for that reaction.

There are different ways you could do this, but one that I've used that seems to work is the same way I teach 'leave it'. You start by having a high value toy in your hand and saying 'no' as you show it to him. He stops what he's doing and looks at you for the toy, and you then say 'good boy' and play with the toy. Once Howie's got the hang of this, you can then say 'no' but without showing him the toy first, but still playing with him when he stops. After a while he should understand that 'no' means stop what you're doing and get a reward instead.