Areas to work on to come through dogolescence with a stronger relationship and a dog you enjoy spending time with!
Dogolescence is often a challenging phase of canine development. With their increased strength and stamina along with their increased desire for independence and exploration yet slower maturing social development, it can feel like you and your canine teenager are growing farther apart instead of bonding further. You may feel that your training has fallen apart and that your dogolescent just won't listen to you. You may get well-intentioned advice to "make" your teen dog be obedient, or use "tough love" to get through to them that they need to do what you tell them. The reality is that "making" your dog listen means that you have resorted to using pain, discomfort or the threat of those to increase compliance. That's not thriving. There is another way to build up your relationship and build your dogolescent's desire to work with you instead of against you.
To help you and your dogolescent thrive together, increasing skills is a much better focus than getting obedience. Here are 5 areas to work on that will build your bond and your dog's connection to you.
#1 - Focus
This is an area that dogolescents often struggle with. Within the same outing they may be completely distracted by multiple things and then become hyper-focused and stuck. To help build up their ability to maintain focus when you need/want them to there are many strategies you can use. One simple strategy is to reinforce when your dog checks-in with you. Start out in environments with few distractions and mark and reward each time your dog looks up in your direction. Once your dog is frequently looking up in your direction in that low distraction environment, go to an environment with a bit more going on and practice.
Another strategy is to ask for things that require focus for short periods of time, interspersed with "free" time. As an example, let your dog sniff and go out away from you on leash exploring for a few minutes before you start trying to do any loose leash walking exercise. Practice loose leash walking for a short period and then release to sniff again. Your dog will likely be able to focus better during that short period than if you try to just start the walk demanding loose leash walking. And over time, your dog will be able to extend that focused period especially knowing that they will still get their opportunity to sniff and explore.
Remember: What is reinforced will increase over time!
#2 - Confidence
Sometimes behaviors that may seem like refusing to listen to you or that your dogolescent is out of control are actually due to underlying fear and concern. In addition to the fact that some dogs may experience multiple adolescent fear periods, there are other factors that may contribute to a teenage dog struggling with confidence. As our adolescents get bigger and stronger and adult-looking, we tend to change how we approach new situations. We know that puppies need safe exposure to new experiences and people. We may be better about keeping those short and not overwhelming our puppy with too much stimuli. But our teenage dogs may react to feeling overwhelmed or unsure by jumping, barking, grabbing the leash or even lunging at us and nipping. As a result, we restrict their experiences because they are "too much to handle". We may also get reluctance to respond to some cues if they are unsure.
Instead of restricting experiences, we want to carefully continue to introduce our dogolescents to new experiences and people in ways that allow them to feel safe. It can also be helpful to set up patterns of behavior that give them a framework of what to do in a situation. This could be creating a pattern of sniff around, then do a leash walking game like connect the dots, then some practice settling near you all in a known and comfortable setting. You can repeat that pattern, but make the leash game and settling expectation shorter when you go to a new setting. This allows your dog time to process the environment (a desire and a need of our dogolescents) and then gives them specific established routines to follow. Knowing what to expect and knowing what to do can be a real confidence boost in new situations!
#3 - Calmness
Our adolescents often seem to have only 2 speeds: Off and 100%. Most life experiences don't require 100% energy, and in fact that super arousal makes it much harder to process information (like anything you might be trying to get your dog to do), much harder to consider options for response to stimuli and is ultimately mentally, emotionally and physically exhausting. Dogolescents also often have FOMO, and may resist sleep or quiet time on their own if they are worried they might miss something interesting. As a result, we may see adolescent dogs that are strung out from lack of quality sleep and unable to settle. A core skills you want your dog to have is how to settle. One strategy is teaching them to settle on a portable mat, bed or towel. This gives them a clear visual cue of where and when to take it easy. Start at home in a quiet room. Work up to having your dog be able to settle while you are doing (or pretending to) something else like working on your computer or watching TV. Eventually you can start taking it out with you to places and practicing very short sessions of settling. This is a great skill for visiting friends and family, and eventually for heading out on field trips like a cafe or brewery.
Another great thing to do with your dogolescent is to spend some time watching things together. This could be sitting on the front steps together and watching people down the street walking. Or sitting in the car in the parking lot of a busy store watching people go in and out of the store. You want your dog to be far enough away that they can watch without either trying to get to or get away from from what you are watching. Over time, you should be able to get closer. This is helpful for dogs that want to greet every person or dog that they see. Life is actually much easier if your dog can exist calmly without feeling the need to rush over and say hello to everyone else!
#4 - Relationship
I can confidently say that the most powerful tool for behavior change I experienced in over 30 years of working with human adolescents is relationship. Building a positive relationship was the key foundation for everything else. That relationship built confidence and trust, and was critical for any meaningful positive changes. Building a positive relationship with your adolescent dog will similarly help make everything else easier. Unfortunately, they can be so challenging and their behavior so frustrating that it can be much harder to feel a positive bond to your dog. It's important to find ways to help you keep feeling good about your relationship. One way is to look for something positive frequently during the day. Maybe sometimes you can only come up with something like "Fluffy peed outside this morning" but it makes a difference. It allows you to start to shift from looking at what your dogolescent can't (yet) do towards seeing what they now can and are doing.
It's also important to practice being with your dog instead of always doing with your dog, especially if you enjoy things like training, dog sports and/ or going lots of places with your dog. We can get so caught up in all the things we want to be able to do with our dogs and all the things we need to teach our dogs to do that we can forget to stop and appreciate them for being who they are. I find it very helpful to create times to just hang out with my dog with no agenda, no expectations. That might be just sitting outside together in the yard. Or it might be watching him destroy a cardboard box I have given him to shred and admiring his technique.
#5 - Your Skills
Like it or not, your skills are important. If you have ever worked with a trainer and been frustrated when the trainer easily gets a behavior from your dog that you have been struggling with, then you have experienced the difference that skills and experience make. You certainly don't have to get trainer certification, but you will find that improving your skills in some key areas will really help you during your dog's adolescence and beyond. Make sure that you learn and refine your understanding of dog body language. Too often people don't see and understand the signs that a dog is uncomfortable with a situation. This can lead to a host of problems and can impact the trust your dog will have in both themselves and in you.
Improving your skills in training techniques will allow you to have clearer communication with your dog. Dogolescents can have difficulty processing information anyway at times due to the changes in their brains, and we can make it even more frustrating when we aren't making training easy and clear. For example, delaying reinforcement when your dog does a desired behavior makes it harder for your dog to figure out what the desired behavior was. That makes it harder to repeat, and they don't understand what you want and what to do. If your dog really wants the reinforcement, they may show their frustration by barking, pawing or jumping to try and get the reinforcement themselves. Or your dog may decide to leave the situation altogether by either walking away or shutting down. Improving your timing makes it easier for your dog to figure out what you want them to do.
Simple yet Powerful
Working on skills in these 5 areas will help you and your dog build a bond that will last a lifetime. For more strategies, activities and support, join the Adolescence with Less Angst program and go from surviving the canine adolescent period to thriving!
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