Surviving Adolescence

Surviving the Teen Dog Phase: Tips to Help You Both Thrive

Adolescence can be a wild ride for dogs and humans alike! If you’re living with a teenage dog right now, take a deep breath, you’re not alone. 

Here are some practical ways to help you and your young canine buddy get through this sometimes-chaotic stage with your sanity (and your bond) intact.

🐾 Keep Up with Training Lessons

Stick with those training lessons! All those basic cues you learned in puppy class — watch, sit, down, stay — still matter. Keep practicing them every day.

If your dog suddenly struggles with a cue, try one of two things:

1️⃣ If it’s an essential behavior for daily life, take a step back and revisit the basics — think of it as starting fresh. Don’t worry: your dog will pick it back up faster this time around (even if it’s the second… or third… or fourth time!).

2️⃣ If it’s a fun trick or advanced skill that isn’t urgent, give it a break. Let your dog’s brain reset for a few weeks, then circle back for a quick refresher later.

🎾 Play, Play, Play!

Never underestimate the power of play. It’s one of the most underused tools in training and in building a great relationship with your dog. Make time for 5–10 minutes a day of your dog’s favorite game — tug, fetch, hide and seek, you name it!

Better yet, weave skills into your play. Games that teach cues, impulse control, or recall can be super effective and fun for you both.

Check out the Play With a Purpose Membership on Patreon to learn how to play in ways that encourage learning good behaviors.

🐕 Find the Right Exercise Balance

Teen dogs are often overflowing with energy, but finding the sweet spot for exercise is key. Too little, and all that pent-up energy can bubble over into mischief. Too much, and you risk turning your dog into a super-athlete who needs massive workouts just to cope.

What’s the best approach? Short, frequent play sessions throughout the day help burn energy without overdoing it. Mix in some enrichment that uses some mental energy, such as playing Find It Games. 

Save the long marathons for special adventures, not daily routine.

🌟 Stay Positive and Upbeat

Focus on everything your dog has learned and keep the training fun! The more enjoyable you are, the more your easily-distracted teen will want to stick with you. Be silly, be upbeat, and celebrate the little wins.

😂 Mistakes Happen — Laugh It Off

Every dog makes mistakes, especially adolescents. When your pup pulls a stunt that tests your patience, take a breath and try to find the humor in it later. Call a friend, share your story, and laugh about that moment you dashed outside in your pajamas to catch your runaway dog.

The more you can laugh, the easier it is to let go of frustration and move forward. After you’ve had your giggle, think about how you can prevent the same mishap next time with better management and a little extra training.

Remember: You don’t have to tackle the teenage dog stage alone! The Crazy Canine Adolescent Community is here to support you with tips, cheerleading, and a safe place to share the ups and downs. Come join us, we’re all in this together! 💛🐾

Getting Help for Your Crazy Canine Adolescent!

Reasons Why You Should Get Help Training Your Adolescent Dog!

Understand how nature plays a role in the developing brain during adolescence.

If we look how human adolescents behave or think about the things we did as a teenager, it's often easier to understand why our dogs are doing the crazy things they are doing. Yet adolescence is often the time when most dogs end up in shelters or being rehomed. Dogs enter adolescence around 6-8 months and most mature somewhere between 18-24 months, while XL breeds and high drive sporting breeds tend to mature closer to 3 yrs old. People simply don't understand why their dog is doing these things either for the first time or repeating behaviors that had been worked on but are not getting better. This is the #1 reason to get help from a trainer during this time! 

Beware of the trainer that tells you they can stop a behavior quickly with tools. Seek a trainer that can help you understand why your dog is doing those behaviors and teach you how you can support your dog during this challenging stage.

Here are some common adolescent challenges and how a skilled trainer can help you work through them.

Impulse Control

As nature walks your dog through various developmental stages, their brain basically becomes scrambled. Often dogs make bad decisions here, generally leading to self reinforcing behavior such as grabbing that food off the counter while no one is looking. You may have started training them not to jump on counters as soon as they were tall enough to reach, but suddenly it's become a recurring problem. Adolescents often lack the ability to make good choices when something is tempting. That guilty look they give you when you use a scolding tone of voice or physical punishment is not really guilt, but more of an appeasement behavior a dog would give another dog if they felt threatened. Punishment works to stop behaviors but never teaches a dog what the right behaviors or good choices are. A good trainer can give you multiple games to play to help teach your dog to control their impulses and make better choices. 

Fearfulness

Puppies are basically hardwired to stay close to their mom and littermates, per the whole safety in numbers philosophy. Yet adolescents are going through changes that encourage them to spread out, meet new friends (or make new enemies), find their own food, and explore the environment. This doesn't happen over night! Nature has laid out this plan to slowly develop as the dog learns how to survive in their growing and changing world. This process can cause a dog to go through heightened periods of fear while the brain is literally adding new neural pathways. A dog might suddenly become fearful of anything "new" in their environment. Your pup might have seemed totally confident walking around Halloween decorations but suddenly they are afraid of the Christmas decorations because they are new during a time of heightened fear. 

One of the biggest misconceptions out there is that if you reward a dog for barking at something then turning back to you, then you're teaching them to bark. Yet most commonly adolescents bark because they are afraid of something. You can't reinforce fear! But you CAN support that fear by being a person your dog feels safe coming back to when something scary happens. You CAN teach your dog to follow you away from extra scary things that surprise both of you. You CAN help your dog learn to process scary things when it is safe to do so. A good trainer can teach you how to support your dog through these stages of heightened fear responses.

Boldness or Bravery

Along with periods of increased fear, your adolescent will also have stages where they feel stronger than their are. This is similar to human teenagers who feel invincible and ready to take on the world. For dogs this can lead to increasing intensity during play which can easily escalate to a fight between friends. This bravery can also lead to extra barking, lunging, and pulling on the leash to try to reach distractions such as people, other dogs, wildlife, etc.

A good trainer can help you determine if your dog's behavior is naturally developing according to their age or if it seems to be extreme or something to worry about. Plus a good trainer will teach you the skills to better handle these situations to prevent injury to yourself, your dog, and/or other animals.

Environmental Processing

Just like human teenagers seek freedom to explore the world around them, adolescent dogs need to explore their world too. As dog owners, we control how large that world really is. A working farm with lots of land might teach a dog the farm boundaries are the edge of their world where dogs never leave the farm except maybe a trip to the vet. Owners who live in more urban settings often walk their dogs more starting with their neighborhood and branching room to other places often  including visits to other locations such as camping, friend's houses, hiking trails, etc. Service Dog owners have the largest worlds of all dog owners, needing their dog to be resilient in a wide variety of environments.

It's during adolescence when our dogs are learning how to do risk assessments for their world. What in their world causes potential danger? A farm dog might have to learn to avoid the tractor or horses. A city dog might have to learn to avoid traffic. Service Dogs are often taught to avoid specific things based on their person's needs. 

Along with learning what needs to be avoided, adolescents learn what is simply so normal that they can ignore it and what is going to bring them pleasure or enjoyment like going to visit Grandma and Grandpa who always have yummy snacks.

With all the things that dogs learn by processing the environment, this is the most common mistake dog owners make by not letting their dog have enough time to process things in the environment. A good trainer can teach you how to do this safely to help your dog learn these lessons without repeating or practicing undesired behaviors.

Preventing Undesired Behaviors 

We all know adolescents, both human and canine, lack the ability to make good choices all the time and are prone to choosing things with instant gratification instead of options with delayed reinforcement. Human parents set limits for their adolescents, perhaps adult supervised parties only. In the dog world that might be playdates with friends instead of free-for-alls at the dog park. A huge adolescent challenge I deal with regularly is pulling on the leash which can be totally prevented when we change the way we go on walks. 

The more practice our dogs have doing undesired behaviors, the harder it becomes to change their minds by encouraging acceptable behaviors. If you got away with stealing and eating your favorite food (chocolate in my case) and your parents tried to keep you from stealing by offering you vegetables, no matter how much you loved vegetables that simply wouldn't work. With a human picky eater, adults would simply stop having the junk food available hoping to encourage the teen to make better choices. This is similar to the dog who steals food off the counter. The more self reinforcement they receive from this thievery, the harder it will be to teach them to avoid that counter. As dog owners, we can keep those counters clean until we can teach the dog that more rewarding things happen on other surfaces, teach the dog impulse control, and manage their access to the kitchen counters until they are better able to make good choices.

Whatever challenge your having with your adolescent dog, a good trainer can teach you how to set up for success, avoiding chances to practice undesired behaviors while you teach the dog to do the behaviors you desire.

Moral of this post:

If you're struggling with behaviors your adolescent dog is doing, seek help from a skilled trainer as soon as possible. Don't walk! Run to you closest force free trainer for help before the problem becomes out of control, you become frustrated with your dog, and your dog fails to learn how to navigate their world the way nature intended!

Understanding Fear in Adolescents

Understanding "Fear" Stages in Adolescents

Parts of this post were taken from the Confident Canines Coaches Class.

I'm pretty sure every dog owner on the planet wants the very best for their dog, wanting them to be successful and happy in life. (I'm sure there are exceptions to that, but those are not MY PEOPLE and we are not going to worry about them here!) I'm confident that no one reading my blog wants a dog who is scared, fearful or traumatized!

Yet, I'm also pretty confident that most dog owners have never thought about protecting a dog's confidence unless you've had a personal experience with a fearful dog that you've been trying to help. If you follow Absolute Dogs then you might be more familiar with the idea of protecting your dog's optimism. Confidence & Optimism go hand in hand to develop Resiliency! So for this post, those words are pretty much interchangeable so I'm going to stick with the term "confidence" in this section.

It's particularly important to protect our dog's confidence especially through adolescence and young adult stages, however these tips can also apply to older dogs of any age. Even my boy Cam, who dealt with fear and anxiety his whole life needed help with protecting his confidence at 9 yrs old. My overly confident young adult, Azul & my overly confident adolescent, Roz need help protecting their confidence as well.

Fear stages

As our sweet cuddly puppies transition into adulthood, they go through various "fear" stages. Many on the dog training community challenge the name "fear" stages because so much more is happening at that time then an increased risk of experiencing fear. Adolescents often struggle with fear, impulsiveness, dis-regulation, and increased emotional outbursts. (Does this sound kinda like a human adolescent?) Needless to say, the term "fear" stage is well known in the dog training community and fear is the part that is most likely to be recognized by dog owners that are not dog training experts. Therefore I'm going to continue calling these times of increased brain changing activity as fear stages.

Some experts say that most dogs go through 3 fear stages and a few dogs go through 4 fear stages. I'd like to challenge that and say that all dogs go through 4 fear stages and possibly 5, however the older they are the less the stage impacts their behaviors making it more challenging for owners to recognize the stage as a fear stage. We do have a ton more information on fear stages and the science we know about them in our Positively Puppy Paws Classroom & our Crazy Canine Adolescents Classroom if you want more info.

During a fear stage (no matter how old or whether it is the dog's 1st-4th fear stage) the dog's brain is going through a period of change or rewiring of connections from Point A to Point B in the brain. These are naturally occurring changes that all animals go through as they transition from the baby stage of wanting to stay close to mom/family for safety to the more independent role of being able to manage on their own as a fully functioning adult. Even humans go through this type of change as they develop, it just takes a lot more time for humans then it does our dogs.

When a dog is in a fear stage we see a few things that develop a common pattern which help us as dog owners recognize the stage as a time of fearfulness. 

Fearfulness: This is the most noticeable as our dogs often are suddenly afraid of something that is in the environment that they never seemed to notice before.

Impulsiveness: Think of this as the "leap before you look" struggle. Our dogs see something and want to get to it so quickly that they may not notice certain hazards between them and what caught their eye.

Forgetfulness: They knew certain cues, routines, and habits before that suddenly fly out the window and they act as if they have no idea what you're expecting from them in this moment. Fearfulness is the easiest for us to recognize and probably why we call these stages "fear stages!" Over the years, I've found some commonalities to the things that dogs find fearful at certain ages.

Watch for upcoming posts this month that on each of these definitions and how we can use the science to help protect our dog's confidence and optimism.

Understanding Adolescents Series

Post 1, Post 2, & Post 3

Walking Your Adolescent

The challenge of walking an adolescent dog is struggle that most owners face at some point.

Understanding the challenge of walking adolescents is the first step to setting up your "Train Smarter" walk with your dog.  To understand the behaviors we often see in adolescent dogs, we have to understand a bit about how their brain is working (or not working!) at this stage.  The puppy brain is designed to stay close to their family (canine or human) processing and enjoying the world around them from the safety their family provides.  The adult dog brain is designed to think for themselves based on their basic need to survive and thrive which includes finding food, water, shelter, etc.  The adolescent brain is basically a time of transition where the brain is forming new connections as the teen learns to explore their environment more intensely to begin to seek out the skills they need to survive and thrive.  While this is how nature designed the canine brain, we ask our dogs to live in a "people world" where survival depends on how they cope in the world we put them in.  That will be a future blog, but for now I want to focus on how the brain changes impact our adolescent dogs.  Here are common struggles that adolescents go through:

• The environment is majorly exciting to all the dog's senses which almost immediately sends the adolescent into a higher emotional state simply by entering a new environment.
• Due to hormonal changes and the natural desire to find a mate, other dogs often become a huge distraction.  This is even true for altered dogs without hormones getting in the way as the brain is still driving this motivation.
• With the rewiring of the brain, the dog often seems to have forgotten basic training skills that they previously new well.  This often makes it seem like they are suddenly stubborn or defiant but really they are simply experiencing a stage of forgetfulness that is pretty close to what we've come to call brain fog in humans.
• With all the changes the dog goes through periods of higher fears and lower ability to control or self regulate their impulses.  This means they are prone to repeating the puppy behaviors of jumping, pulling, being vocal, and other habits we've been working on for months.

When you add those all together they lead to increased challenges any time we take our dogs out for an adventure.  This often discourages us as owners to the point that we start to hate our time out with our dogs because it seems like its one struggle after another.  Then the dog picks up on this they begin to hate going out on adventures too.  This is where "Train Smarter, Not Harder" comes into play because our dogs still need exercise and exposure to things that will be in their world.

When we walk with a puppy, we often follow the theory of spending 5 minutes per months old so a 3 month puppy gets 15 min walks and a 4 month old puppy gets 20 min walks.  This leads to slowly making walks longer and longer which is perfect for the puppy stage.  But if we continue this practice into adolescence we often build their stamina to a point that we humans have a hard time keeping up with.  Adolescents actually excel when we take shorter walks that focus on more on keeping their emotions and arousal level down to a more manageable state.

If you're not sure how to keep your dog under threshold check out these blogposts:

Understanding Your Dog's Emotions  & Focus Around Distractions Workshop- Day 2

The art of going nowhere on our walks is lesson I had to learn and it has changed how I take my adolescents on their walk.  Be sure to check out my blog on Getting Started with Sniff-a-bouts.

The number one reason our dogs need to go out and about is to explore the environment and sometimes moving around makes that too challenging.  When we set out on the mindset of we need to walk a certain distance or be gone a certain amount of time or accomplish x,y,z on this walk, we set ourselves and our dogs of for failure.  The main goal of our walk should be to create a pleasant experience for both us and our dog.  The trick is how do we do that?  The simple answer is to design a walk that will help our dog explore while also helping them to stay calm and under threshold.  This is where I developed the sniff-a-bout!  

Learning to take a slower paced sniff-a-bout is a challenge to us humans because we more focused on accomplishing tasks...we go for the walk because it needs to be done without thinking about what the main purpose of the walk is which should be environmental processing for our dogs.  The video above is a great example of giving the dog time to explore the environment at their pace and a good example of how I teach myself and my dogs to do a sniff-a-bout walk.  

When you are first starting sniff-a-bouts with your adolescent dog and you've set everything up for success, add a blanket or small chair to your gear list and head out to your location.  Since we typically condition our dogs to go from one place to another on our walk, we have to then teach them to stay in one area a bit longer.  This is where the blanket comes in.  If you sit down and do something boring to your dog, they will wander nearby and begin sniffing around.  You can toss treats out and about if they are used to snuffle feeding in the grass or you can use the treats to reward when they chose to check in with you.  Eventually our dogs usually will come back to us to engage in whatever activity we want to do next.  At this point I like to have a brief training session or play a short game before ending the walk.

Now you may be thinking if we don't go anywhere, how is my dog getting exercise?  From experience I can tell you that a dog who thoroughly explores the environment for 20 minutes is typically more content to go home and nap then the dog who walked for 30 minutes non-stop.  One of the other perks that you gain from the sniff-a-bout is that you and your dog enjoy some time together without practicing the bad behaviors that they've been doing on a walk.  

The point of a sniff-a-bout is to meander here and there with no end destination in mind. You walk at the dog's pace and the direction they want. When Azul goes too fast, pulling on the leash, I stop walking until he can check in and put slack in the leash. Having high value treats to teach the release of leash pressure helps. For Azul, I used treats when he was younger but then I conditioned him to use the smell he previously pulled to as his reward for releasing the leash pressure. Near the end of this video, you can see his reaction to seeing a dog quite far away causing him to pull on the leash. At this point he is beginning to be too excited so I need to move away from the distractions until his excitement can come down to a more manageable level. It's also important that we choose our tools carefully on walks to keep us all safe. This is why Azul wears a harness with a dual clip leash! Most of the time I'm holding the leash with pressure on the back clip. But the front clip prevents Azul from pulling me off my feet if he hits the end of his leash suddenly. We have to be aware of trigger stacking on our sniff-a-bouts. In the video, Azul was still fairly excited from seeing a little dog in the road when another dog charged the fence a few feet away. You can see how the dual clip setup helps me to maintain control and calmly give Azul a chance to refocus in my direction. A very light pressure on the back clip is used to help lead him back to me when he's a bit too close to the fence. The issue with trigger stacking is that if we have too many unexpected distractions in the environment we are walking in, our dog will have more extreme reactions to each trigger as their self-regulation ability decreases with their emotional reactions increasing. The whole goal of the sniff-a-bout is to stay calm and avoid triggers so we have to slowly build up to more distracting environments. Leash manners do not happen overnight! It takes time and patience with a ton of practice for both person and dog. By taking more sniff-a-bouts and less focused walks with our adolescents we prevent them from practicing the behaviors we don't want such as pulling, barking or lunging at a time in their life when their brain is changing so rapidly that they simply can't control themselves. That doesn't mean you shouldn't work on training heel and loose leash walking with your adolescent. That means you need to keep those training sessions short and in environments where you know you have a greater chance for success. Make your exercise walks be about the dog and your training sessions about training without mixing the two together for an exercise walk. Check out this post by Crazy2Calm Canine Coach, Elliot Brooks to learn about improving your heel training for working dogs and anyone who wants to take their dog with them into pet friendly public places.

For more help with training your adolescent dog, check out our Crazy Canine Adolescents Classroom.

Announcing the Crazy Canine Adolescents Classroom

Registration is officially open for the Crazy Canine Adolescents Virtual Classroom!

We hope you enjoyed the FAD (Focus Around Distractions) Workshop!  The information presented in that workshop was just the tip of the iceberg.  We have a ton more information in the Crazy Canine Adolescents Classroom!  Check out this video for a sneak preview of the virtual classroom!

If you want to register for the Crazy Canine Adolescent Classroom, click here!

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us!

Yooper Paws of Love

Penny Beeman, Trainer & Behavior Consultant

Website:  yooperpaws.com

yooperpaws@gmail.com

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