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2. Adolescence – The Best Time to Shape Your Dog’s Character - The Teenage Dog

Adolescence in dogs can begin as early as 4 months and lasts as long as 2 years. However, the exact age during which adolescence sets in does vary between breeds and individual dogs.

What is common across breeds is that during this period of time any dog is difficult to own; they are at their naughty best – they bark, they jump, they steal and they seem to have no regard for any rules at all.

The sweet and cuddly puppy that tottered after your feet and slept all through the day suddenly vanishes and transforms into an adolescent dog that is so frustrating to own!

The adolescent dog, very similar to the adolescent or teenage human, has an immature brain in a body that’s almost the size of an adult. The maturing process that happens in the dog resembles the human teenager in several ways, and your dog needs similar guidance during this difficult stage of life.

In dogs during adolescence, their bodies begin to produce hormones that can make them react in seemingly odd or uncharacteristic ways. It is during this stage that they are most likely to try and raise their position in the hierarchy or establish their alpha position in other words.

It is therefore important that you are extra vigilant during your dog’s adolescence so that you can successfully prevent his hormonally changed behavior from becoming a permanent problem.

The Dog’s Experience

Dogs by nature are highly instinctive animals who find it difficult to understand human priorities pertaining to hygiene and social living. The changes taking place in the adolescent dog make it difficult for them to cope with the changes happening inside them; this surfaces in several ways:

1. Teething: The permanent teeth are coming in, and the dog needs to chew to relieve its gums of the discomfort. This urge can be so strong that the dog will not spare anything it sees including shoes and furniture. Providing chew-toys are a good way of taking care of their requirement.
2. Growth: Rapid growth may cause the dog mild or even severe pain in different parts of its body. Some conditions that occur during this period may even require medical treatment or surgery, while others may be self-limiting.
3. Inexperience: The adolescent dog has to discover and come to terms with both the world the dog lives in and dog’s own capabilities within its space.
4. Gender:
1. Male dogs can be particularly difficult to handle since their bodies produce testosterone at a rate several times the adult level of this hormone. As a result, some male-oriented behaviors like urine-marking, roaming and aggression towards other male dogs can become very prominent at this stage of life if the dog is not corrected at the right time, in the right manner.
2. As a female dog’s body prepares for and experiences the first heat cycle, several ‘aberrant’ behaviors such as flirty and playful activity toward male dogs, roaming, frequent urination, false pregnancy and aggression toward other female dogs are frequently seen.

What to Do

The human family is best equipped to handle the adolescent dog, and it’s a wonderful opportunity to establish a great, lifelong relationship with your canine family member who is going through a difficult phase in life. In most ways you just need to keep doing the same kind of things as you have been doing to raise the pup when it was younger.

Best of all, the fact that your adolescent dog is ready to begin to bond with you in a whole new way, it is easy to form a real bond. Be patient with your dog and try not to interpret your dog’s error during a training session as deliberate defiance. The dog too like humans needs to ‘ask questions’, and it is wisest to answer those questions kindly and consistently.

That’s the nature of an adolescent; the dog won’t be any better trained because you get angry and lose your cool in the process.

Chances are that your dog will try getting what they want through obnoxious behavior such as barking, jumping, being hyper, and putting their head on the dinner table, you may have to be more patient that otherwise.

It is best to wait them out at first and maybe even give in occasionally. Refusing politely over time as they get over their adolescence usually works best for they realize that you have given them what they want for this behavior in the past and that trying harder is not being of help to them.

Have fun when training, and make it fun for the dog, too. As a matter of fact always, training done in a playful tone is more effective because this is the most receptive state of mind for learning – and that goes for humans as well as the dogs!