The Teenage Phase: Guiding Your Dog Through This Critical Stage
If your dog is between 6 and 18 months, they are going through the adolescent phase of their development. Everyone knows and expects having a puppy to be hard work, but this next stage can be even tricker!
Common issues during adolescence:
- Your dog is finding it harder to listen to you
- Your dog is more easily distracted
- Your dog is more interested in other dogs but lacks the social skills to have effective interactions
- Your dog is finding it harder to manage their emotions- they get frustrated, excited or nervous more easily and it takes them longer to reset
- Things your dog once found easy to do are now trickier
- Your dog’s loose lead walking, recall and other skills have diminished
This is all NORMAL, but it’s important to take appropriate action so these annoying behaviours don’t turn into lifelong habits when your dog reaches adulthood!
Changes in Your Dog
Your dog will be experiencing physical changes (e.g. still physically growing), biological changes (their brain is rewiring) and hormonal changes (puberty is kicking in!).
This can all impact your dog’s behaviour, especially their ability to regulate emotions; interact with other dogs appropriately; and listen to you.
How Can You Help Your Dog During the Teenage Phase?
The most important thing is to remember all these changes that your dog is going through. Think back to when you were a teenager- it’s not an easy time, but at least we had people who could explain what we were going through. It’s harder for our dogs as we often expect more from them (as they are older and bigger) even though they are going through so much change.
