If your adolescent dog does not get out and about regularly and few unfamiliar people come to the house, his desocialization may be alarmingly rapid. Consequently, many adolescent dogs become progressively desocialized toward unfamiliar people and dogs until eventually they become intolerant of all but a small inner circle of friends. At home, the dog interacts with the same familiar friends and family, and is walked, if at all, on the same route to the same dog park, where they encounter the same old people and the same old dogs. Puppy classes and parties are often a thing of the past and most owners have established a set routine by the time their dog is five or six months old. As they get older, dogs have fewer opportunities to meet unfamiliar people and dogs. Socialization often heads downhill during adolescence, sometimes surprisingly precipitously.Giving your dog ample opportunity to wrestle with other dogs, regularly handfeeding kibble and treats, and periodically examining and cleaning your dog’s teeth are the best exercises to ensure that your adolescent dog maintains his soft mouth. Bite inhibition tends to drift as your dog gets older and develops more powerful jaws.(What a scary thought, that your dog would prefer another dog’s rear end to you!) All of a sudden he won’t come, won’t sit, won’t settle down and stay, but instead jumps up, pulls on-leash, and becomes hyperactive. Your dog’s interests may quickly become distractions to training, so that your dog will continue sniffing another dog’s rear end rather than come running when called. But now your dog is developing adult doggy interests, such as investigating other dogs’ rear ends, sniffing urine and feces on the grass, rolling in unidentifiable smelly stuff, and chasing squirrels. Lure/reward training your puppy was easy: you taught your pup to eagerly come, follow, sit, lie down, stand still, roll over, and look up to you with unwavering attention and respect because you were your pup’s sun, moon, and stars. Basic manners may take a sharp dive when puppy collides with adolescence.But if you taught your pup well in his earlier months, the drift in household etiquette will be slow until your dog reaches his sunset years, when housetraining especially tends to suffer. Household etiquette may deteriorate over time, especially if you start taking your dog’s housetraining and other good behavior for granted.Ignore your dog’s education now and you will soon find yourself living with an ill-mannered, under-socialized, hyperactive animal. Your dog’s adolescence is a critical time. Even when your dog reaches maturity, you should always be on the alert for the emergence of unwanted behaviors or traits, which you must quickly nip in the bud before they become hard-to-break habits.Ī dog’s adolescence is the time when everything starts to fall apart, unless you make a concerted effort to see it through to the stability of adulthood.
But until then, if you don’t keep on top of things, there can be precipitous and catastrophic changes in your dog’s temperament and manners. Both behavior and temperament will tend to stabilize, for better or worse, as your dog matures around his second birthday for small dogs or third birthday for large dogs. Things will continue to improve if you continue working with your adolescent dog, but they will definitely get worse if you don’t. Advertisement Changes during dog adolescenceīehavior is always changing, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.
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