FF125 The Adolescent Dog: Making a Terrific Teenager!

Adolescence... argh! The era of big bodies and big feelings but tiny brains and tiny attention spans. That time frame between around 6 to 24 months when your sweet little training superstar seems to dissolve all of the skills you've worked so hard on to date. Greeting skills? Never heard of them. Walking nicely on a leash- what are these words? Recall.... huh?!

Course Details

At the same time, new and obnoxious behaviors may appear. Over-excited jumping or mouthing behaviors. Excessive sniffing. Marking! Games of keep away or catch me if you can. Their attention on you seems reduced but their attention on everything else explodes! We know that our dog aren't GIVING us a hard time, but that they are HAVING a hard time and yet.... how do we help them (and also ourselves)?

It's not a coincidence that adolescence is such a challenging time for so many dogs and their owners. Their adult-sized bodies tend to clash with their complicated little puppy brains. This is often the stage of life where breed-specific behaviors come on strong- herding, hunting, or guarding behaviors, for example. And add to that the typical hormones and brain-rewiring that are standard in this stage of life and you've got a recipe for big feelings, frustration, and behaviour changes that can test your relationship!

This class looks at the common reasons WHY we see behavior change in adolescent dogs, using the LEGS (Learning, Environment, Genetics, and Self) model of ethology and also dives into strategies to make this life stage easier for you AND your dog.

We'll look at:

Causes of behavior changes in adolescent dogs
Outlets for exercise and enrichment
Key Skills to train (or refresh) to promote safety and sanity at this life stage!
Proactive strategies to reduce the likelihood of common behavior problems particularly related to emerging breed-typical behaviors, arousal, and self control

Note: this class is not suitable for dogs with severe ongoing behavior issues such as aggression or extreme fearfulness. Consider this class if you have a 'teenage' dog who seems to be regressing in responding to known cues or who is having difficulty with arousal modulation, self control, or attention in your daily life or sports contexts.

TEACHING APPROACH

Lectures are released in clusters at the beginning of each week so that students can budget their time in accordance with the amount of reading and training required. Lectures are split into Learning Topics which introduce ideas or concepts which can be helpful for families of adolescent dogs, and Key Skills which provide written descriptions of training exercises, along with short video demonstrations. Videos do not contain any additional voice-over or instructions not already provided in the written portion of the lecture.

We have a Training Assistant in the class facebook study group for the June 2025 term!

Syllabus

Week One

1.0 L.E.G.S and your adolescent
1.1 How This Class Works
1.2 Marker Cues
1.3 Off-Switch
1.4 Interval Brain Training and the Pause Button
1.5 Engagement Game
1.6 Movement Puzzle 1

Week Two

2.0 Understanding Arousal
2.1 Arousal Up/Down Game
2.2 Movement Puzzles 2
2.3 Collar Give
2.4 Leash On/Leash Off
2.5 Reporting Behavior

Week Three

3.0 Behavior Chains
3.1 Proximity Games
3.2 Prevention: Jumping
3.3 Prevention: Biting
3.4 Long Line Walks
3.5 Leash Skills
3.6 Movement Puzzles 3
3.7 It's Your Choice

Week Four

4.0 Breed/Group Specific Behaviors
4.1 Loose Leash 1,2,3!
4.2 Stationing
4.3 The Consent Test
4.4 Greeting Vs Not Greeting
4.5 Movement Puzzles 4

Week Five

5.0 Unwanted Behaviors
5.1 Stationing 2
5.2 Greeting People
5.3 Leash Skills- Threshholds
5.4 Movement Puzzles 5

Week Six

6.0 Hormones
6.1 Proactive Strategies for Teens
6.2 Stationing 3
6.3 Leash Skills- This Way
6.4 Threshhold Skills 2
6.5 Movement Puzzles 6

Sample Lecture

Last week we talked about how the emotional part of your adolescent dog’s brain is growing at a more rapid pace than the thinking part of their brain, and as a result, our teen dogs are more impulsive and prone to acting on feelings rather than decisions. Coupled with easy escalation into over-arousal, this can be a bit of an issue.

But… we can influence the neural pathways in our growing dogs' brains with our training, exercise and enrichment choices. The pathways that get the most use become the recommended route for information to travel on. We want to pave the pathways that are the most productive and helpful, from both our perspective, and our dog’s perspective… and turn those into highways so that when a response comes out automatically or without a lot of thought, it flows most easily on that well-established route. And, for the same reason, we don’t want to allow a lot of travel down the bumpy side-roads of unwelcome reactions, since the more they are travelled now, the more likely they are to become recommended routes in the future too.

Rehearsing our dog’s ability to get highly aroused, and then chill back down, is a great way to build the appropriate neural pathways in a structured fashion. Specifically teaching our dogs to get pumped up, and then calm down in quick intervals, can help prevent them from sliding into over-arousal any time something stressful or exciting happens.

We have actually already built a good framework for this Up/Down arousal action with our pause button interval training! A short duration of training, followed by a short duration of rest. To turn this into an Arousal Up/Down game, we are going to simply increase the excitement level of the working interval. Use the information from your recent homework assignment to guide this. What gets your dog excited?

We want to choose a game that will increase arousal relatively quickly. Now… we have been aiming for about 10 seconds of ‘training’ followed by 10 seconds of pause button rest, but for this game, for some dogs, we might find it takes a wee bit longer to get a good game going. Our goal, though, is to choose intervals that allow your dog to get aroused and have fun- but not go so long that they lose interest or get fatigued, or dive into frantic over-arousal. What that magic amount of time is depends on your dog and the game but for this week, let’s shoot for 10-30 seconds of play, and then a matching amount of rest.

What is the game? Pick something suitable for your dog. Leroy LOVES chase games- and if I combine those with food play, we end up with a high arousal game that involves me running a little and getting him chasing a cookie and he gets aroused quickly. About 10 seconds of play like this is a good interval for him since he escalates really quickly!

Many dogs will get really excited by a good game of tug, fetch, or some beloved tricks! Be a bit creative. Our goal is not to specifically cause our dog to tip into over-arousal, but we want to see an increase in their arousal and get up into that sweet spot if we can! During our pause button behavior, we are hoping for our dogs to just chill for a second, just as we did in last week’s use of the pause button.

Play – pause button – play—- pause button– play— pause button.

Here's a full circuit where Leroy plays, pauses, plays, pauses, plays and pauses- and you can see by the third round of play that there are signs he's getting over-aroused. In his case, regrabbing at a toy he's already dropped is one of my tells! Next time I play, I'd choose to do only TWO back and forth rounds, to keep things more successful.

Homework:

3 rounds at the most for now, start in a low distraction enviroment.

Instructors

Erin Lynes

Erin (she/her) is a lifelong dog enthusiast from Quesnel, British Columbia, Canada. Erin is certified as a Karen Pryor Academy Training Partner, a Certified Professional Canine Fitness Trainer, a Licensed Family Dog Mediator, and as a Cani-Fit Leader, ...

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