Hi! I have a 7 month old who has just begun his descent into adolescence. He has gone from relatively calm, obedient puppy to over excitable, unfocused spazz! All the training I've done seems to have left his brain, and he can not contain his excitement right now. Jumping up on people, stealing food, demand barking, pulling on leash. I feel like I'm going crazy! He's even hard to exercise because he gets too excited to focus on fetch or his flirt pole for long enough to get tired. Anyone have any tips on how to get through this phase? I have so many bad thoughts, like what as I thinking? Can I handle this dog? Is this a phase or his permanent personality? Any encouragement appreciated ☺️
It’s common for people to report a range of problems in dogs entering the second half of their first year. These tend to be caused by a combination of boisterous exuberance and insufficient training. But rather than worrying about the cause, it’s usually better to focus on each problem one at a time, and rebuild the basic building blocks of obedience from scratch. So you need your dog to be able to pay attention to you (under increasing distractions, but starting simply to begin with). You need focus games for this. Games that teach the dog to look at your face on cue for example - there’s an video and instructions in this article (you don’t have to use your dog’s name for this game) Impulse control games are also important foundations - so waiting for eye contact or for your dog to sit before allowing access to food, going outdoors, leash unclipping, etc. Lots more info here:Impulse Control For Dogs - Teaching Your Pup To Keep His Cool When you’ve got a puppy that offers you eye contact or sits to get what he wants, then you can move on and start to build those obedience skills. You also need to make sure your puppy is getting enough mental stimulation - regular training sessions, and exercise. Lots of info on that here: How To Exercise Your Labrador More resources: Stealing Barking Pulling on leash Hope that helps! Shout if you have more questions but my main tip is to get more attention and focus, then tackle one issue at a time.
I have the same thoughts-mine is 5 months next week, hes been excellent and easy to train, but gets so hyper and then just bites, it eased for about a week and now all back teeth are coming through so it's getting quite a meaty bite now, shocked me the first time bit now just deal with it, the thing is he always falls for it as I'll go stand in his pen and crate area with treat, sita at entrance firsts as knows he will be going in and to get his treat goes in but knows he's going to catch up with some zzzzs-i totally ignore him and he gets used to settling while im in the house-he is well behaved other than the biting-my daughter gets quite upset. But now looking forward to adolescence haha
