Is Your Adolescent Puppy Not Listening?

Training your puppy throughout adolescent will help them become a happy, stable adult dog.

The puppy biting is no longer sharkey, the potty training seems to be going well, and you thought you were through the hardest part of raising a puppy, but along comes adolescence: when your puppy ignores all the cues you taught, runs away from you when you call, and has zero sense of self-control.

Adolescence begins when your puppy is around 6 months old and can last until they’re 2 years old, depending on breed, size and genetics. It may also be impacted by age of spay/neuter, but that’s a discussion to have with your veterinarian.

Smaller pups mature earlier due to their smaller size, while larger pups need more time to grow up. They are go through the same development process however, which includes:

Learning Boundaries

Puppies get away with a LOT, even from other dogs, but from about 6 months of age, they lose their get-out-of-jail-free cards with older dogs. Where once they could jump and pounce and bite older dogs’ faces, they may now be corrected by adult dogs for stepping out of line.

This can be scary for you, if you’re not aware or expecting it, and it’s helpful to know your pups’ playmates and what their typical behaviour looks like.

Risk-taking

Adolescent dogs seem to have no sense of self preservation at all, and in a way, they don’t. Teen pups feel an almost uncontrollable urge to explore their surroundings. This means the recall you worked so hard on may start slipping, or the habits that you worked so hard to build in them seem to be disintegrating before your very eyes.

During this period, you’ll need to keep all your management strategies firmly in place. This means things like preventing counter surfing by blocking puppy’s access to the kitchen when there’s food on counters. Or keeping your pup on a long line instead of taking them off leash.

Sexual Maturity

Pups enter sexual maturity during adolescence. All this means is that reproduction becomes a possibility for them. Always discuss questions about spay/neuter with your veterinarian. In terms of behaviour, however, you can expect to see some changes in your dog as it enters this period of development.

Males can get a bit testy around other males that they were previously friendly with as they test those boundaries. There is some evidence to suggest that male adolescents are bolder and more challenging in this phase than females.

Fear Periods

There is also mounting anecdotal evidence that adolescent dogs may have a fear period similar to the one that occurs in puppies of around 5 or 6 weeks of age. If your teen pup seems to be quite worried or nervous about something they previously had no trouble with, they may be in a fear period.

There’s nothing to worry about, and you can help them through it by supporting your pup to take a wide berth around any scary things in the environment while in this phase.

Training

By all means, keep up your training during your dog’s adolescence. It will ensure your bond with your dog remains strong so they understand that they can always trust you to have their back.

It’s also important for you to remember that all the training and effort you put in when they were just a pup is still in that scrambled brain, and once the rewiring is complete, you can pick up where you left off.