The Adolescent Brain

The ‘teenage’ months are well documented and commonly experienced phenomenon. It can be hard, hard work, but if you are anything like me, having an understanding of WHY it is happening may help you to weather those tricky months a bit better!

The Science-y Bit

As your dog grows, their brain changes from a puppy baby-brain into that of an adult dog. But it doesn’t happen overnight – parts develop quicker than others and it can often leave them with unreliable and unpredictable behaviour, which is often the thing that owners find most frustrating.

One of the last things to develop are their inhibitory neurons – the parts of the brain that make your dog stop, think, and control themselves. In fact, their brains often have large amounts of excitatory neurons (the ones that prime your dog to react) and few inhibitory neurons.

Can you imagine how that affects our dog’s behaviour?

They are primed to respond to every stimulus, with little control over themselves once distracting things appear!

Is it any wonder they just can’t help themselves from jumping when your neighbour pops round to say hello? Or when they see a doggy pal in the distance?

The good news

The good thing is that it is unlikely that your dog has forgotten all their previous training, even if it feels that way. It is buried deep underneath a fizzy teenage brain and the inability to think straight when things get exciting, but it is there! I know that seems a small consolation prize, but knowing that your dog DOES still know how to walk nicely on a lead, they just can’t exhibit this behaviour when life gets fun should reassure you that we aren’t starting completely from scratch.

Should we ‘wait it out’?

After learning about their brains, the most common reaction is – ‘so they will grow out of it?’
The short answer… Yes. Kind of.
The long answer… the brain will eventually balance. HOWEVER, if we give up on training through this adolescent period, your dog is likely to learn new favourite behaviours that start to replace their recall or loose lead walking. It is really important we not only keep training, but prevent them practicing the wrong things throughout adolescence.

What can we do?

A HUGE part of adolescence is management. As we said above, the things they practice during adolescence can easily become lifelong behaviours, particularly if your dog finds those undesirable behaviours rewarding. Therefore, we need to have measures of preventing the behaviours being exhibited whilst we work on them with training.

This may look like baby gates, long lines, pushing things back on our counters, or avoiding the locations they REALLY struggle in whilst we train for them.

In addition to this, the following training exercises can be helpful to develop their impulse control further…

Place / on your mat. Being able to pop your dog on their bed and have them remain whilst you do other stuff is not only a great way to manage things like answering the front door, pestering you whilst cooking, or snatching food, but also develops their patience and ability to control themselves.
Ask your dog to sit or lie down on their bed.
Wait a second.
Reward by feeding them whilst they still sit on the bed.
As your dog starts to get better at sitting and waiting, increase the duration of time they have to wait for a reward.
Then, things get fun…
Ask your dog to sit on their bed.
Step away, touch a door handle.
Reward if they stayed on their bed.
As they get better you can build in even more distractions.

Some ideas…

• Open a door.
• Open the fridge.
• Do star jumps.
• Sit down.
• Make a cup of tea!
• The ultimate… open your front door and say ‘hello! How are you?!’ to your imaginary friend.

Will the neighbours think you are mad? Highly likely.

Will they be envious when you next answer the door and your dog is sitting politely behind you? Absolutely.

Find your dog’s custard cream.

When having a quick snack in the office the other day, I discovered something new about Bumble. He is a spaniel therefore he loves all food, but I offered him a custard cream and… he was feral. It is his absolute favourite thing in the world.
Now training with custard creams long term would not be practical, but it does highlight the importance of having a reward your dog really loves. So often I see people calling their dog back, giving them a biscuit, the dog goes ‘yeah thanks’, eats it, and promptly disappears again.

We need rewards that LIGHT OUR DOGS UP.
Thinking out of the box is highly encouraged.
Does your dog run off to chase wildlife? A long handled chaser toy could be the one.
Does your dog like to do tricks? Call them back to a middle or a hand touch.
Does your dog like food but get bored easily? Throw it! Scatter it! Bowl it along the floor!

If your dog wants to run off and have the time of their lives with another dog, calling them back and making them sit and eat dried kibble is unlikely to cut the mustard. Think about replicating the things your dog loves doing most (even the undesirable ones!) in the way you reward them and watch them come ZOOMING back to play the game.

Remember the good bits

Even in the thick of adolescence there will be something that your dog does well. At the start of every teens course I ask everyone to give me one thing their dog does well, and something they would like to improve.

It makes me sad sometimes how much people struggle to find something good because the bad can seem so overwhelming. There will be something though! Even if it is ‘gives good cuddles’ or ‘loves playing ball’.

Try to keep the things your dog does well at the forefront of your mind, and when things get tough – go and do that instead. Have a cuddle, throw a ball, and start fresh tomorrow.

Do you own a fizzy dog? The kind of dog that spots something exciting and goes completely deaf? Or maybe they are spinning, lunging, barking at the end of the lead because they just HAVE to get across and chase that squirrel / dog / person / leaf?!

It can be super frustrating, particularly when you KNOW that the thing you are asking your dog to do, they could usually do with their eyes shut! Actually, they would probably do it better if they kept their eyes shut…

If your dog has got to the point that they are behaving this way and everything you say falls on deaf ears, they are likely over threshold. This means that they are way to worked up to be thinking rationally and are usually acting entirely on impulse.

So, it’s our job to bring them back down again so that they can start to use the thinking portion of their brain.

Read on to find out how…

Space: A dog’s threshold can sometimes be imagined as an invisible bubble around the distraction – when your dog crosses into this bubble they begin to lose control. Sometimes, the quickest way to bring them back down again is creating more space from whatever is winding them up.

Move away and keep an eye on your dog. When they get to the point that they may be alert, but no longer reacting and looking slightly more relaxed, that is your cue that they are able to think slightly more rationally again.

Sniffing: Once you are far enough away from the trigger than your dog isn’t tying you in knots anymore, encourage some relaxation. The best way to do this is to encourage sniffing of some kind – a scatter feed works well. Use some grass if you can; the kind of sniffing we want to aim for involves your dog sounding something like a little piggy, rooting around to find their treasure. Sniffing releases dopamine which will aid in calming your dog and making them feel more secure.

Don’t nag: It is natural to panic slightly when our dogs start to behave in this way. Particularly if we are in a busy area; it’s embarrassing! With this panic often comes a lot of nagging from owners… ‘Fido come! Fido look! Watch me! Sit. Sit. No. Sit!’. We’ve all been there.

However, your dog already has SO much stimulation that there is a risk your voice will turn into white noise in the background. Try to stay quiet, and utilise a marker word (if you use one) or a well-timed reward to tell them when they do something right, such as turn away from the trigger or glance up at you.

Freedom: This one feels counter intuitive but bear with me. When we are desperately trying to get our dogs to focus on us, it seems sensible to give them less freedom, and this usually comes in the form of reining them in or holding tight to the lead. For the dogs that are fizzy because they want to get somewhere else, being physically restrained is the most frustrating thing in the WORLD.

As soon as you feel safe to do so, letting the lead go slack and leaving your dog free to make their own choices can be instrumental in calming them. It also provides us valuable information – if they are immediately back to barking and spinning, you are not blow their threshold yet!

Bumble is very nearly 18 months old now, and it feels as though he is (touch wood) turning into a fairly respectable adult dog. But I will freely admit that there have been times that I just didn’t think we would ever get here, and times where I didn’t particularly like him. If you came to any of my classes last year I am sure you heard him being called a variety of names!

Adolescent dogs can often make us question where it all went wrong – your perfect puppy may be ignoring the most basic of requests, recall may have disappeared over the horizon (along with your dog!), or loose lead walking could be anything but a walk in the park.

I wanted to put together a few things that got me through that adolescent period. When it was challenging, when I questioned what on earth I was thinking getting another dog, and when I felt like packing it all in. These are the things that helped.

It is normal for it all to go wrong.

During adolescence, hormones start raging through your dog’s body in peaks and troughs until they final even out into what they will be for your dog as an adult. Studies also show that their actual BRAIN is being reorganised. Can you imagine??

These huge changes present themselves in a similar way to human teenagers; mood swings, low impulse control, irritability, conflict with parents or caregivers, and a need for autonomy. This means that their super snappy recall may now be anything but, which is frustrating for us because we KNOW that they know how to recall! But often it isn’t the recall directly they are struggling with, but the ability to control their impulses enough to not chase the bird/dog/squirrel/smell.

Now I know this sounds all doom and gloom, but sometimes having the knowledge that your dog’s behaviour isn’t abnormal can make all the difference. The science shows us that your dog is probably having quite a hard time due to factors largely out of their control, so let’s take a breath and cut them (and yourself) some slack.

‘They will grow out of it’… or will they?

So now we know that our dog’s behaviour is largely likely to be due to physical changes in their body, we should just wait it out, surely? When the hormones settle, the good behaviour will return?

There is no denying that when the hormones settle your dog will find it easier to respond to their cues again, but that doesn’t mean we should just pack all training in and wait for it to get better.

When Bumble hit adolescence, his recall took a nosedive. His motivation for disappearing was that he LOVED to just run. In a straight line. As fast as he could. He found this hugely rewarding – likely due to the massive adrenaline surge I’m sure it induced. There were definitely a couple of moments where he took off running and it looked as though he may have packed his bags to start a new life over the hill.

Now imagine that from the ages of 8-18 months I had just let him sprint off on every walk with a ‘he will grow out of it’ attitude. Likely by the time he reached adulthood the sprinting would be a well-rehearsed favourite behaviour of his that I would have little to no control over. Would adulthood fix this? Very unlikely.

So whilst we can cling to the knowledge that it will get better, we should also remember that what is practiced during adolescence will get repeated.

Therefore, management is our friend.

Long lines for recall. Short bursts of good quality loose lead walking training in easier environments. NOT leaving a tempting bacon sandwich on the side. Think about how we can set our dogs up to practice the good stuff.

‘Are you meeting their needs?

This is a huge question, and it can be so easy to question whether you are doing everything you can for your adolescent dog. They may seem as though they have boundless energy or are constantly demanding more attention from you.

You may also have heard that they need more sleep than you thought they would?

Or that mental exercise is just as good as physical?

The truth is – sorry folks – they need all three.

Physical – the easily tired puppy is gone and you may feel as though you have to physically exhaust your dog before you can get any peace. This isn’t true, and you will probably find yourself walking further and further every day as you create a canine athlete. Physical exercise is incredibly important, so do research what an adult dog of your breed should need per day; this could involve road walking, hiking, running, agility, charging through bushes (fellow spaniel owners anywhere?) but if you find yourself having to constantly increase what you do with your dog to tire them out, consider another angle…

Mental – mental workouts should form a good portion of the things you do with your dog. This could involve teaching new tricks, drilling behaviours they know, scent-work (this one is amazing for tiring them out!), or even just chilling in a café and watching the world go by. Anything that requires them to do some thinking and takes them out of their ‘normal’ brain state is ideal.
Rest – this one is just as important as the physical and mental exercise. As any parents of young children will know; an overtired child will be a million times harder to settle and reason with that one that has had a good nights sleep. The rate at which their brains are developing means they need lots of rest to recharge and grow and our teenage dogs are no different. There is nothing wrong with a rest day here and there, but primarily we should be encouraging some form of nap or undisturbed downtime into our dog’s day.

This may seem like a lot to manage, and it is! I know I feel like super dog mum if I manage to get all three of these right in one day – sometimes life just doesn’t allow it. Try and aim for a good balance over the course of a week instead and cut yourself some slack if it doesn’t go to plan – I can guarantee your dog loves you anyway.

Take a step back and enjoy the little things.

If you are anything like me, you had huge plans of what life with your puppy would look like. Walks off lead on the beach, strolling into the sunset with a loose lead, your dog asleep under the table in the pub… It can be tricky to accept when our dogs are technically ‘grown up’ that these things aren’t a reality yet.

Try and find an activity or two that is easily achievable and enjoyable for both you and your dog. This could be trick training in the living room, playing find-the-ball in the garden, or as simple as sitting and having a good cuddle with your dog.

When Bumble and I were at our worst point, I started taking five minutes out of each day to sit out in the garden on the grass, no distractions, and just make a fuss of him. It honestly made me realise that I had been focussing so much on getting him to where I wanted him to be that I had forgotten to enjoy him. I will freely admit that there was a point that I didn’t particularly like him (still loved him of course, but I really couldn’t seem to find that special bond I have had with other dogs) and these five minute cuddle sessions quite literally saved our relationship and became the highlight of my day.

Find yourself a tribe.

I know I have banged on about how normal it is but when you see everyone else’s dogs out on walks behaving perfectly, it can be hard to believe. Speaking to people with similar struggles can be a real game changer in not feeling quite so despondent, and maybe even having a laugh about the things your dogs have put you through this week!

Find yourself a good training class, or even join a positive, online community to not only improve your training skills and put a plan in place for surviving the teenage months, but surround yourself with people that will celebrate your wins and support you through your struggles.

Our UltiMUTT Club is such a place. As well as zooms, training sessions, e-books, video resources, and open discussions, there are real people (including the instructors!) dealing with their real-life teenage dogs who will be able to relate to any and everything you could throw at us. Read more about this community and how to join us, by clicking here.