Adolescence can be a difficult time, for both humans and dogs.
We are often lulled into a false sense of success when our dogs are young puppies because those cute little bundles of joy tend to respond readily when we engage them. They just love to be with us and doing stuff with us. However, once they hit adolescence, they often become more easily distracted and suddenly everything else is more interesting. It seems they can no longer even hear us (just like our human teenagers!).
The period of adolescence in dogs is generally between the ages of 6 -18 months, give or take some months, although some dogs don’t reach maturity until even later (maybe 2.5 to 3 years old). And then there are some dogs that just seem to “grow up” around 12 months of age. All dogs are different, but most go through a period around that time where their behaviours become more challenging and frustrating.
During this time, your dog is experiencing changes to his biological, physical, and psychological makeup. These changes can affect behaviour, just like they do in humans.
When difficult teenage type behaviours start to creep in, it can be a bit of a shock, especially if you thought puppyhood was hard work and the rest was going to be cruisy.
DON'T wait for them to grow out of it. While some dogs will settle with age, it is never a guarantee. And some will develop entrenched behaviours that will take more time and effort to undo than it takes to prevent them in the first place.
So, what can you do to survive this period and, more importantly, to help your dog through it? Here are some of our top tips:
1. Don’t stop at Puppy School
When it comes to our dogs, puppy school is just the start and a good puppy school is focussed on foundations like toilet training, socialisation, habituation, experiences, and building resilience. Puppy school on its own is not enough. Our human kids don’t go straight from reception to graduating year 12 as responsible community members. They actually go to school for 13 years. So, don’t stop your dog’s training at puppy school and then be surprised if the wheels fall off once they hit 6 or 7 months of age. Enrol in classes or engage a trainer to work with you in-home.
2. Keep training sessions short
Adolescent dogs can have short attention spans, so work with it rather than against it by only training for short bursts. As a general rule, dogs learn better through short sessions multiple times a day rather than a big session. Going on too long makes it easier for you both to make mistakes and you are more likely to end the session with both of you frustrated.
Short sessions mean you can finish on a high when you’ve had a few successful repetitions of a skill.
If you can do at least a couple of sessions of 5 minutes a day, it’s a good way to build engagement and communication with your dog while practising skills.
Make training fun by using games to teach skills. Or break up sessions with play, which in itself is an important part of any training plan.
3. Provide appropriate outlets for instinctual behaviours
Regardless of what they are bred for now, pretty much all breeds stem from a working background and need an outlet for their breed instincts. Shepherds, Cattle Dogs, Collies, and Kelpies all have a strong need to round things up. Dachshunds were originally bred for tracking and scenting badgers (they would burrow, pull them out and kill them). Terriers were bred for hunting foxes, badgers and vermin.
We need to allow dogs the opportunity to act on these instincts through positive outlets such as flirt pole training, tug and fetch or through joining a local agility club, tracking, or herding classes. Make sure impulse control is a key part of these outlets so that dogs learn not to act on impulse when it isn’t appropriate.
4. Set your dog up for success.
It’s a big ask to leave your adolescent alone with access to everything and expect them to resist temptation (or even to understand that what seems like fun to them is not acceptable to you). Pups and young dogs left to their own devices often don’t make good choices (not by human standards anyway) and it’s not just about damage to your stuff or nuisance behaviour that upsets the neighbours – it’s about keeping them safe from harm.
Inside and outside the house, we recommend a level of containment for safety and management. Whether you are out at work or just too busy to monitor them, a crate or restricted area in the house and a pen or dog run in the garden can keep them from practising behaviours we don’t want to encourage as well as keep them safe from harm. It’s much easier to put the fence around your dog than to fence off every likely hazard or temptation, and it gives them a clearer message about what is expected of them.
Tighter boundaries now mean more freedom down the track. We initially use management to implement boundaries, structure and rules, while we are teaching and shaping the behaviours that we want. The end goal is to teach dogs how to successfully be at liberty.
5. Make sure your dog has plenty of down time
Although your adolescent won’t need as much sleep as he did when he was a puppy, he still needs lots of naps and calm downtime. Being overtired can still make him cranky and being constantly over stimulated and over excited can lead to poor decisions. Dogs need to be able to switch off, but it doesn’t necessarily come naturally, and it is something they will need help with. Crate or pen time, tethered decompression, conditioned relaxation, or even just using the lead more, can help your dog to understand how to be comfortable doing nothing at all and to develop an off switch.
6. Accept that there are going to be good days and bad days
Don’t let everything go because you had a bad day. Some days your dog will be great, other days it will be like he has never learnt anything at all. Keep consistent and keep guiding and teaching. You will be setting foundations that will enable those skills to really fall into place as he matures.
7. Don’t get angry
Your young dog needs guidance and understanding. He may not know what he’s doing wrong. Many of the behaviours we find unacceptable are actually things that come naturally to dogs, like barking, digging, or chasing fast moving things. Don't wait until a problem crops up that needs fixing. Work on shaping and reinforcing the behaviours you do want so there is less chance the unwanted ones will crop up at all. And of course, provide an acceptable outlet for him to undertake those natural behaviours (see number 3 above).
8. Don’t forget to have fun!
Lighten up! Don’t get so focussed on the issues that you forget to have fun with your dog. Find things you both enjoy and spend time doing that together. Get your dog thinking, not charging from one distraction to the next. Get your dog listening to you and working with you, not against you. Good relationships are not built on tension.
It’s all about balance. Your young dog needs to spend quality time with you in learning, playing, and enrichment, balanced with plenty of structured down time and decompression when you aren’t working with them.
Set your pup up for success and if you need to, seek the help of a professional trainer.
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