Dog adolescence: why it looks like a regression and is not one

Puberty and behavioural maturity do not arrive together. Sex hormones come first and change motivation, reaction thresholds and interest in the social environment; the parts of the nervous system that govern impulse control and the ability to delay a reward finish developing several months later. In between you have an animal with the body, the strength and the drives of an adult and with incomplete self regulation. That is where the feeling of living with a different dog than the one you had three months ago comes from.

A learned behaviour does not disappear, it stops being the most rewarding option. With adolescence, everything outside gains value: scents, other dogs, movement, the distance a dog can now cover. If the reinforcement you offer is still what worked at four months, you lose the comparison. Reading these behaviours as spite leads to the wrong solutions; reading them as a shift in the balance of value leads to solutions that work.

The technical answer is called lowering the criterion. You go back to contexts where the dog succeeds, shorten the distance, reduce the duration, raise the value of the reward and rebuild from there. It is not a step backwards in the plan: it is how a behaviour is maintained while the environment becomes harder.

In many dogs, between six and fourteen months, there is a period when familiar things frighten again: a drain cover, an umbrella opening, a person in a hood, a noise in the street. The reaction can be out of proportion compared with the same dog at four months. This phase is handled with distance and choice, not with forced exposure: making a dog approach what it fears increases the chance that the fear becomes established.

• Increase distance until the dog can eat, sniff or look at you: closer than that, it is not learning anything useful.
• Always leave an escape route and do not pin the dog on a short lead in front of the trigger.
• Pair the appearance of the trigger with something good that arrives straight after, keeping the order: trigger first, food second.
• Do not repeat the exposure more than a few times per session and stop while it is still going well.
• Record date, trigger, distance and reaction: without a record you will not notice whether the working distance has shortened over three weeks.

1. 1

   Put recall out of reach of failure

   For a few weeks use a long line in open areas rather than risking failed recalls. Every ignored recall teaches the dog that ignoring it works, and unlearning that costs far more than preventing it.

2. 2

   Take exercises back to easy contexts

   Home, garden, a quiet street. Rebuild the response where it is still solid and add one difficulty at a time: either distraction, or distance, or duration, never two together.

3. 3

   Pay better for what you want to keep

   In this phase dry food from the bowl does not compete with the environment. Use high value reinforcement for the behaviours you genuinely need and reserve it for those.

4. 4

   Protect sleep

   A young dog usually sleeps 14 to 17 hours out of twenty four. Sleep debt lowers reaction thresholds and makes every other problem worse. Provide a quiet place and real breaks between activities.

5. 5

   Reduce chances to rehearse the wrong thing

   Closed gates, lead on in ambiguous situations, managed greetings. Every unwanted behaviour that succeeds is reinforced by its own result, whatever you say afterwards.

6. 6

   Measure instead of remembering

   Keep one line a day with three entries: how many outings, which episodes, how sleep went. Over six weeks a trend is readable, an impression is not.

An adolescent has more stamina than self regulation: it keeps running when it should stop. Meanwhile the skeleton has not finished forming. Growth plates usually close between nine and twelve months in medium breeds and later, up to around eighteen months, in large and giant breeds. Until then it pays to choose the type of effort, not just the amount.

• Prefer free movement on varied ground over forced running beside a bicycle or long sessions at a constant pace.
• Limit repeated jumps from heights above the shoulder and sharp stops on slippery surfaces.
• Spread movement across several short outings instead of concentrating it in one long weekend session.
• Alternate physical activity with scent work: the second tires the dog without loading the joints.
• If the dog limps even for a few hours after an outing, reduce the load and record the episode instead of waiting for it to repeat.

Blaming everything on the phase is convenient and risky. Several medical problems appear in exactly this age window and show up as behaviour change. Before building a long training plan, it is worth ruling out the most likely physical causes.

• Orthopaedic pain: refusing stairs, hesitating to jump into the car, irritability when touched in one specific area, a changed sitting posture.
• Urinary problems: increased frequency, straining, small volumes passed, sudden return of indoor urination.
• Ear pain or itching: head shaking, head tilt, reaction to ear handling, worse on one side only.
• Chronic gastrointestinal disease: recurrent loose stools, irregular appetite, compulsive eating of grass or objects.
• Rapid worsening over a few days, signs appearing at night, or self injury: none of these fit a developmental phase and all need assessment now.