Dogs' teenage / adolescent phase is a famous nightmare for dog pawrents! BUT, it's possible to make the most of it and come out the other end with an amazingly trained dog and an amazing bond between you and your dog!!
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Video on reactive dogs: • Have a Reactive Dog? W...
One of the most common problems I see other dog moms and dads go through is the infamous teenager phase that every dog goes through, usually starting somewhere around 6 to 12 months until as long as 18 or even 24 months old. Some classic signs of this adolescent puppy phase is that your dog suddenly seems defiant, doesn’t listen to you anymore, wanders off further when off-leash, seeming just generally more crazy and troublesome, and if your dog is intact, their hormonal behaviors will also come out around this phase. Also, this is the phase when your dog’s socialization window is closing, and their fear-based or aggression-based behaviors such as reactivity will also start to come out, and your friendly pup who used to get along with every dog might even start getting into little fightss.
So the first thing you want to do when you realize your dog’s becoming a teenager is to immediately start assessing if their basic needs are being met. If you have a working breed, start considering finding your dog some form of a “job”, or start looking into dog sport beginner classes for puppies. Then, check if their physical needs are being met. Of course, as a puppy, your dog could probably be happy with just a 10 minute walk and then some playing indoors. However, as your dog grows into an adolescent puppy, he’s going to start needing more and more exercise in order to be calm and happy.
The next thing you can do to manage your dog’s teenage behavior is to start hand feeding your dog’s meals, and additionally, start turning mealtime into training time. Like I said before, dogs in the teenage phase can become seemingly rebellious and stop listening to anything you say. The truth is, dogs are just like human teens and with all the hormones and excitement going on, they aren’t simply not listening to you because they think it’s funny, it’s because their desire to explore the world around them is more motivating than whatever you’re saying. So, by hand feeding your dog through this phase, your dog will learn that you are their source of livelihood and the direct source of their food, and the more you do this, the stronger your bond will become. By building this stronger bond and teaching them that you care for them and keep them alive, they’ll be more likely to listen. In terms of training your dog during mealtime, this works the same way as hand feeding. Basically, you can use their meals as their rewards and train them in basic commands
Thirdly, do NOT punish your dog for their quote unquote “bad behaviors”. Like I said, teenage dogs are way more likely to rebel in this phase of their lives, and they might even start showing signs of dog aggression, or territorial behavior, or dominance related behavior with other dogs. But, the key here is to NOT punish them!! This is a whole different topic more related to reactivity, counter conditioning and desensitization, all which I already covered in other videos on this channel that’ll be linked in the description, but for the sake of this video, just know that punishment and yelling never goes well when it comes to this fear or aggression based behavior.
Next, manage the situation and don’t let your dog practice bad behavior. What I mean by this is that you shouldn’t give your teenage dog too much freedom because this will come back to bite you in the butt later on in your dog’s life. For example, don’t let your dog off-leash if they aren’t listening to their recall cue like they used to. To put this into an example, when Mochi hit the teenage phase when he turned 7 months old ish, we went like 4 months where Mochi was always on a long leash. During this time, we practiced recall with super high value treats and when there was even a slight chance he wouldn’t listen, I just didn’t say the recall cue because I knew if he didn’t listen, it would let him practice ignoring me. continue building your dog’s confidence. The teenage phase is also when a lot of dog’s go through their fear period, meaning they’ll suddenly seem reactive or fearful or aggressive towards things that were completely fine to them when they were little babies. So, the key here is to just build their confidence. Building confidence can be done by helping them overcome challenges, and can be done with simple tasks like encouraging your dog to hop onto an elevated surface and rewarding them. Or, you can do scent games with your dog because that’s super rewarding as well. Even simple obedience training