Adolescent Dog Survival...Sharing Tips & Tails

[BrodiePup]

Moving on from the puppy survival thread, this is for anyone with a hormonal teenager 🤪

Brodie is just over 7 months now, and is a fun loving pup who is (mostly) a pleasure to be around. My main issue is still walking him which can either be almost a pleasure, or like having a Tasmanian Devil doing breast stroke and bunny hopping down the road 😡. There seems to be no reason for which dog gets attached to the end of the lead, but at least it shows he can do it if he's in the mood!

We've also had our first proper tummy upset this week 🤢 no doubt due to some rubbish he picked up and swallowed before I spotted it. Thankfully it seems to have passed now.

Thank you @BrodiePup

A slight name change for us but probably one we'll stick with. I presume we qualify for this thread as Brie is now 6 months old, fully toilet trained and mostly pretty calm around the house but is fast approaching the hormonal months... 🙄We now have the joy of her first season ahead of us and who knows what that will bring 😱

You already know that we have the split personality lead walking trait too; I can never quite predict if it will be 😇or 😈when I clip the lead on.

Sorry to hear about Brodie's upset tum and glad he's on the mend now.

@PyreneanAubrie I've never had a bitch (always seems disrespectful calling female dogs that!) so I don't know anything about seasons...but I will be a shoulder to cry on (hopefully not required) should you need one.

I'm glad Brodie is on the mend too, that was definitely a level of yuck I can live without 🤢.

Recent photo of his pawship.

This is the thread I needed today!!
6 months old and has been a dream pup until last week...he's suddenly decided to only wee in the house again. Which is driving me mad, back to basics for us and the rain isn't helping lol

@coolpineapple1 Hello!
It's hideous when they do that isn't it? You have my sympathy with the rain too...dog drying and paw wiping gets very boring!
Brodie did it a couple of times and I was absolutely gutted. I can't remember the timings exactly, but it was something like 5 months and I smugly decided that we'd absolutely cracked house training, he went 3 or 4 weeks and we had about 4 pees in the space of a weekend, then he got to about 6.5 months and he had another couple of accidents. There's been nothing since then, but I can't quite bring myself to say he's totally house trained.
Don't be too fed up about it, it seems like it's quite common and just a glitch.

Thank you @BrodiePup that makes me feel better!! I'm sure we'll crack it again - fingers crossed

@coolpineapple1 it really will be just an accident 😊

That is so cute @BrodiePup He is a gorgeous boy.

His expression here is so serious and he appears oddly human as if posing for a mugshot/passport/i.d. photo😘

We've had three girls before but it was many years ago - the two before Brie were both male. Boys are much, much easier in truth. Yes, I'm pretty sure I shall be on here cursing when she starts 🙄

The season itself is a problem in that it can make them go off their food, they wee more and obviously it restricts where you can walk them in relation to male dogs. You also have to look out for symptoms of pyometra afterwards which is a major headache. We are considering having Brie spayed because she won't be bred, but we'll wait until after her second season when she should be more or less fully grown.

I prefer boys but husband thought a girl this time would be easier for me to walk...🤔 Clearly, Miss Brie didn't get the memo...😆😂😬

My baby girl is driving us nuts, lol. She’s like a Duracell bunny on steroids! She’s a Podenco (Spanish sight hound). I have three others and know the drill but she is the hardest work one ever, lol. She never stops and she’s so bloomin clever - can open doors now too which is proving ‘interesting’. However she is so sweet and loving it’s hard to be mad.

@Purplecatshopaholic Awww, she's gorgeous 💕and what wonderful ears she has!

It's a really interesting breed/type, I've just done a bit of googling about it because I had the idea it was probably a very old breed like Pharaohs and Ibizans, and indeed it is. They do sound really lovely dogs, and, since you have four of them, I presume they must be slightly addictive!

(And yes, clever girls are always the most challenging ones to rear, I can vouch for that with my current pup)🙄

@Purplecatshopaholic What a striking dog! She's gorgeous! I don't think I've ever seen one.

@PyreneanAubrie Maybe when Brie is old enough to read the memo things will improve 🤣

So Bill is a little young for this thread at five months old, but I know adolescence is coming - his mate at the dog park who is three weeks older is already all legs and humping, and their older friend is coming into her first season and has developed very selective hearing. I'll probably bounce between the two threads for a while!

Has anyone had adolescent pups before? I've heard about the boundary-testing, and losing recall - is there anything else I should be ready for? Are there any good bits? Bill is lovely but a velcro dog who absolutely loves mischief - part of me is hoping he'll get a bit more independent (he's never been left alone yet, as he's never seemed ready for it) but part of me is horrified about the kind of carnage the little sod could wreak, even in a different room 😄

Puppy tax - he managed to persuade me to move the furniture yesterday so he could lie in the only patch of sun. I'm now watching half the telly.

Boys are much, much easier in truth

From reading here and amongst friends it seems like boys are much more difficult through adolescence. Neither of my girls have had much of a teenager phase..

We're just back from a weekend away. Both girls bagged their first summit

Awww, cute pic, @Bupster , Bill looks very comfy in what is clearly an excellent vantage point for not missing any passing dogs! Looks like he is very pleased with your new arrangement even if you aren't 😏

I've done dog adolescence 8 times and....I can't remember anything about it 🤔Not a thing!

So, this either implies that it was so terribly traumatic that I've blocked the whole phase out, or that it was a complete non-event. Just asked my chap and he doesn't remember it either so I'm inclined to go with non-event. We've had 4 girls, 4 boys, reared them all from young pups so we must have gone through it but, nope, it's gone.

However, my experiences won't count because its not as if Pyreneans ever do recall in the first place, and boundary testing is a way of life for them. They're just kind of born fully formed and...old, in fact, very much like I was, and, come to think of it, I can't remember anything about my own adolescence either...😧

Does this win the award for the least helpful answer of the year?

Gorgeous photo!!! Looks like a wonderful walk (and well done to your girls)!

When I said boys are easier, I meant over all, throughout life though, I wasn't referring specifically to adolescence because we don't remember that period being a particular problem for us. And we haven't compared notes with anyone... so I should have said "boys are easier in our experience".

Perhaps we've been lucky or maybe it is a LGD thing, but our bitches have been hard work from puppyhood to old age and our dogs have all been more laid-back and calm. We've had 5 boys and 4 girls.

Sorry if I was misleading with "boys are much easier", @BrodiePup 😳Clearly I am in the minority with that view 😟

JanePup is 10 months.
He is generally pretty good, recall has gone to shit though, thought we'd struck gold with what appeared to be a very biddable border terrier initially!

He's inconsistent too, some walks good as gold, others he gets the devil in him and bolts off after pheasants/squirrels/other dogs. Still pulls on his harness like he's a bloody husky too.

I don’t think we really had a teenage phase either with our (working cocker) girl. I’d say she developed a few new habits at around 12 months but I was all prepped for the loss of recall and chewing everything in sight and it just didn’t come. She just got braver but you'd expect that with age anyway. Maybe I overcompensated with the training and reinforcing, I don’t know. I was just so relieved that the biting was over to be honest.

@tizwozliz Super cool! That's brilliant.

@Bupster - one thing I would say is don't worry about it until it happens. With our older one, I feel like I spoiled some of that time by constantly waiting for it to all go wrong.

@PyreneanAubrie - I think if you have a less biddable pup to start with then you don't get the teenage regression, because you don't ever take your eye off the ball! Certainly I think that's what happened with our oldest, we never had the cute, biddable puppy phase so I kept on training and it gradually got easier. About 8 months was about the time I could actually start to enjoy walks. Prior to that it was all about management and long sightlines!

And every dog is different, our 3 year old is still harder work in lots of ways than the younger one. And the younger one is so easy, there'd be no need for puppy survival threads if they were all like her!

Dog adolescence wasn't invented when I last had pups 🤣, they were just mischievous and not adults yet. Unless it was so awful that I've blocked it out too!!
However, we've got this thread, we've got each other... we're prepared.
Some lovely photos 🥰 Bill and Janepup are gorgeous
OMG @tizwozliz that is absolutely stunning!

Just place marking and lurking so I have some idea of what to expect with an adolescent pup. OMG my adolescent humans are challenging enough 😂

Hey there, been through it with the Wastingdog, honestly my saviour was getting the idiot into nosework and mantrailing. She loves her classes and does workshops in other skills. costs a bloody fortune though, should have been a dog trainer

@tizwozliz

I don't think it's so much about a more or less biddable pup with me but more the fact that I only have experience of living with a matriarchal breed. Female LGD's are almost always more dominant, more reactive and more protective than the males. Our bitches were all more highly sexed than the dogs, more barky, more finicky about food and more likely to steal, two of them were also occasionally grumbly around other bitches. Our boys were far more reliable with toileting and just a lot calmer and easier to live with. And it is widely stated that PMD/GP males are easier, it's not just me saying that... but I just thought that was "normal" because it's how it is for us and clearly it is not true of all dog breeds.

So I think what I said earlier to Brodiepup just shows how little I really know about dogs in general outside of the LGD's. I am completely lost with all the talk of training.

@PyreneanAubrie You're not the only one who is completely lost when it comes to training!
We did all the research before we committed to Brodie, we also have a friend with a springer, so we did know what we were taking on, but OMG is it a different matter when you're dealing with a dog with such high drives! I'm not surprised how many are sent to rescue 🙁, particularly when you get people who think a show cocker and a working cocker are pretty much the same thing 🙄.
We've been incredibly lucky with Brodie, he's never chewed, no separation anxiety, no resource guarding, settles really well on his own etc...it's just the loose lead walking, but we know he hates it, we just want the penny to drop that sometimes he has to be on a lead and other times he can do what makes him happy.
To that end we've arranged a 1-1 with a gun dog trainer on Saturday. I want someone to check that we're going about it the right way, and tell us what we're doing wrong. Depending on how that goes we're going to book another session to meet at a park we take him to.
He is improving and I know it will take time, but a bit of reassurance will be good.

@BrodiePup
Oh looks like I didn't get the memo 🙄

@CaptainBeanThief
Yay! I was getting worried!
How are you?