Tatze is three in April - she's definitely a lot calmer and far less up for play than Twiglet is (8 months old). Twiglet can always 'persuade' her into it, but she was far far more playful with Gypsy this time last year. She snoozes a LOT! At the same time, I find her harder to train than when she was a keen youngster. We have to train the GDPs a 'stand' from lying and from sitting. I decided to teach this to Tatze recently - it's taking ages! Twiglet had it down pat weeks ago.
I think with young labradors there is an "eye of the storm" age, where things seem quite calm, and you feel kinda smug with how well training is going...then the tornado that is an adolescent lab hits...and well everything goes to pot! At 8 months Benson turned literally into a fiend. He wouldn't do anything! This continued until quite recently where some of my training is starting to sink in. Saying all that we decided to foster an older labrador when Benson was almost one..and there is a 5 year gap between the two of them which actually now works quite well. It did mean however, lots and lots of individual walking, because they both had quite different training needs I guess it really depends on the character, and how biddable your existing dog is. Young adolescents and pups need an awful lot of time and training. I personally would find it very,very hard dealing with 2 labs that are very close in age, simply because it could be quite hard when they are older, but sometimes the right dog comes along and oh suddenly you have two, then three...
Charlie is not like this, and he is a couple of months older than Tatze - he has calmed down, but I'd say he has calmed down from "constantly manic" to "can be sensible at times". He still presents as being absolutely juvenile most of the time. He isn't as interested as he was in playing, thank goodness, but if he meets a puppy or young dog he reverts to the age of the puppy he is playing with. Which is sweet and lovely for the puppies he meets, but...... He is much, much, much easier to train than he was. When he was younger, he had the concentration span of a fruit fly. In comparison, now, so long as the reward on offer floats his boat, he'll train for as long as I want....which has been a godsend, because I can train long enough to tire out his furry, over active mind....
Well, this has certainly been enlightening. I mean, we have days (like today) when she absolutely does not want to settle and is will cry at the door to be let out only to cry at the door to be let in and then cry into her kong because she's nearly finished it (you get the picture). BUT these are much less frequent now then they used to be. I thought it was because we had more of a routine and she is getting two walks a day to burn up some of that never ending energy. We lost puppy recall completely at about 4 months when she started getting very confident and it has taken us a while to get it back up to a good standard (about a 95% success rate) - we found that chicken is key. I was kind of hoping that was it??? She still gets very excited when people come over but after a couple of minutes she calms down and eventually takes herself off to bed. We just try and be super calm around her (I'm sure only possible because we don't have children yet), play/train with her a fair bit and be consistent with our rules. So in one way, there's plenty of room for things to go south but in another way, maybe our constant training will help when she hits adolescence. Please say it will help. Otherwise her one day a week at doggy day care will become 5 as I just couldn't cope with holding down a crazy dog AND a crazy job and the bills must be paid. Hmm, I came on asking about when to get a second dog and i'm now wondering whether we should even keep the first :-/
Training will never go amiss. It may seem at times that we are hitting our heads against a brick wall, but all that work is rooting in their furry little brains and will reappear wen we least expect it. Don't forget that some dogs are much easier in adolescence than others - it's a bit like having a human teenager in the house. Some are much worse than others
