About 4 months after each litter of pups goes home, my phone starts blowing up with texts:
Theresa, I don’t know what’s gotten into Hickory, he won’t listen!
Could Myla have accidentally fallen on her head? It’s like she doesn’t remember anything I’ve taught her!
What do I do??
And with a little chuckle… I tell them to smile, pat themselves on the back, and celebrate: because their pup is officially a teenager.
And if you’re pup has mysteriously:
Developed selective hearing
Become rowdier than usual
Started pushing every boundary you’ve ever set
Then I owe you a congratulations too! Welcome to the adolescence stage!
Yes, you’re in for a wild ride. And yes, it will test your patience.
But I firmly believe that with a good dose of understanding, this can be a time you look back on with a slight chuckle… rather than, well, the alternative…
Because once you’re armed with awareness and a few training tips, you’ll know how to manage your pup’s new behaviors and love them through their little acts of rebellion.
So what do you say? Let’s start with some biology.
Why is my pup acting so headstrong?
Think of your average human teenager. As their hormones and brain start changing, their willingness to listen to authority goes right along with it.
Your pup is learning how to navigate the world. And to learn, they need to test - and push - your boundaries.
But why now?
Around 6 months of age, your pup’s hormones start changing. And because their brain isn’t fully developed (think of the frontal lobe in humans, which isn’t fully developed until about age 25), they have a hard time self regulating. Their body tells them to do one thing, and they have every reason to listen to it. That is, unless you step in.
What you can do to make the teenager stage easier on everyone
Your goal: keep everyone sane, and reinforce all your pup’s good behaviors to keep them from forming bad habits.
Now, if you’re knee deep in the teenager phase, that might feel next to impossible to accomplish. But don’t worry, there are some tools you can use to get sanity back on your side:
Tool #1: Impulse control training
Right now your pup’s brain is in full squirrel mode. They see something they want - they go after it. They want to play - they play. There’s very little regulation going on because they’re focused on exploring the world. Resisting temptation simply isn’t a priority.
But what if you gave them the tools to resist temptation when you needed them to?
Think of sitting in a room with your favorite dessert all day everyday. The smells are wafting into your nose, the frosting is calling your name…
(yes, I might’ve been a little hungry when I wrote this)
Even for us adults with our fully developed brains, it can be hard to say no to something so tempting.
But imagine being in that same situation, with a life coach saying, no, you’re trying to make your body feel good, remember? That cake isn’t good for you. Don’t eat it.
You don’t want to disappoint them, or yourself, and the temptation becomes easier to bare.
You can be that life coach for your pup.
Create controlled exercises where you show them something tempting and tell them to leave it.
For example, you can place their favorite treat on the floor, and tell them not to eat it (yet).
This will be really hard for them at first. But the more your practice, the easier it will be.
And when you reward them after they decide to listen to you, they’ll know that listening = reward. They can either give into temptation and disappoint mom, or they can listen and get a treat.
So then when the inevitable shoe chewing, or toilet paper shredding, or counter surfing incidents occur, your pup will be armed with the strength to listen to you when you say no, leave it.
At least, they will most of the time 🙂
Tool #2: Training for calm
Ok, you’ve helped your pup control their urge to put everything into their mouth. But what can you do about their relentless need to play? Exercise is a good option - and I’ll get into that next - but there are some other training exercises you should incorporate into your routine to complement it.
Place training and sit on the dog are great places to start. They teach your pup that sometimes they need to calm the heck down and take a little snooze instead of zooming around your living room 24/7.
By training in a controlled environment, your pup will learn that the world won’t end if they can’t play for 20 minutes.
This tool will help you create moments of calm when you need to clean the house, have visitors over, or even just check out for half an hour and watch some Netflix.
(Sounds nice, doesn’t it? Here’s our blog post on how to practice sit on the dog, and no, there’s no actual sitting on dogs required)
Tool #3: Exercising your pup (physical and mental)
There’s a time and a place for asking your dog to mellow out for a minute, but to be fair to them, you also need to help them get out some of their ever-growing energy.
Daily walks are a great place to start. But a more underutilized, highly effective way to tire out your pup is using brain games.
Remember those days when you had to study hard for a test? Your brain felt like mush after, and those hard plastic chairs started looking oddly familiar to your fluffy mattress at home.
The same goes for dogs. If you give them fun puzzles to work their brain out, they’ll have a lot less energy to put into tearing apart your couch cushions.
You can find some of our go-to toys in our list of favorite pup supplies. Or you can find a good variety online by searching “dog brain games”.
Tool #4: Reinforcement
(+ patience)
It’s great to give your pup tools to avoid getting into trouble. But when they do opt for breaking the rules, you can’t let them get away with it.
Because the more times you let them ignore you, the more they’ll assume that they don’t have to listen. And those habits can get stuck in their brain a lot faster than you’d expect.
So even if it’s something trivial like them choosing not to sit when you ask them to happens, you need to ask them again and wait for them to comply. It takes a lot of patience on your end. But when the alternative is them ignoring you for years to come? Yeah, it’s worth taking the extra 5 minutes now.
Of course, there will probably be days where you are at the end of your rope. I would never expect you to follow through perfectly, 100% of the time. The world won’t end. But I do have one more tool to help you through those more difficult days…
Tool #5: Laughter (yes, really)
When your pup is on a rampage, it’s way too easy to slip into a state of exasperation. Believe me, I’ve been there. But after dealing with one teenage pup after another, I started to realize that there are some things that are worth laughing off.
Oh, Brooke thinks toilet paper is a fun treat? Tell her to leave it, then think about how gross that must’ve felt in her mouth, and give it a chuckle.
Twig is counter surfing for the third time today? That might be a new record of stubbornness. Let’s tell her the command “off”, give it a well deserved laugh, and move on with the day.
It might feel awkward and forced, but it’s a lot easier than having steam blow out your ears every five minutes.
Knowing that these unruly behaviors are a natural part of puppy development and not a personal spite against me has really helped me be patient and cheerful during my pups’ teenage months. I hope it can do the same for you!
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