I wanted to reach out to see if what we are dealing with is normal adolescent puppy behavior. Scout is now almost 9 months. She has been doing pretty well but always a little crazy. We think she is just a normal, insane lab puppy, but had a recent incounter that made us question ourselves a little. Here is the story: We were doing a "meet and greet" with a potential in-home boarding through Rover.com(US site). Scout decides to get the zoomies in the ladies house and starts running around. Then she dumped all the toys out of a toy box and starts carrying the box. Finally she decides go counter surfing. We did correct her, but she did not listen right away since she was doing something more "fun." This is over a span of 10-15 minutes. The in-home boarding lady said she was displaying destructive behavior and it was not normal. She said this a few times. Needless to say, we decided we will likely not be using her to board Scout. We were honestly a little offended but kind of brushed it off at the time. After we got home we started questioning ourselves and wondering if maybe she was right and Scout is displaying some of those issues. At home she listens pretty well, but often we are telling her no or redirect her behavior. She gets fixated on eating toilet paper and likes to bark at us sometimes when she is not getting her way. We do a lot of exercise and training sessions with her to try and get her energy out. Do yall have any thoughts on this? Any advice, reassurance, help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
It sounds like normal puppy behaviour to me. Combine the adolescent pup with a super exciting new house and....Zooooom!
I would say that behaviour is pretty normal at 9 months. I know for us, we had a pretty chill "teenage" lab at our house, however, when visiting friends/family she was way more hyper! Counter surfing has only ever happened at other people's homes - never at our house! I honestly wouldn't worry, I wouldn't have left my dog at that person's house either! Lots of people appreciate a young lab!
9 months has to be THE worst age, honestly. Normal behaviour though, yup, I agree. I wouldn't leave my dog with that lady either. However, just to give you No reassurance at all, at 9.5 years, Years, not months, we still hide the toilet paper. No, really, at 9 months my boy got his CGN. CGC for you. There is hope. You can and should be training but expecting some backsliding at this age. Patience, oh for another two years or so.
Yep sounds like an excited young lab. I wouldn't have left my pup with the lady. She Cleary doesn't have much experience with the teenage lab phenomenon .
She sounds like a perfectly normal puppy. Harley (nearly 4 years old) still gets stupidly excited at other people's houses and it takes a good 5-10 mins for her to calm down. I don't think I would leave my girl with that lady as it doesn't sound like she knows much about adolescent labs.
It sounds very normal puppy behaviour to me too. Obviously you'll gradually work at training her to leave things you don't want her to touch, but it takes time. I'd look for someone who is used to large puppies.
Tilly used to be known as "Chief Crazy Dog" when she was a pup. Cooper was about the same, and actually chewed up more stuff. Both are well behaved now, though Cooper at 2 is still very active and will play hard with other dogs, and still jumps up on people when she is excited.
Scout's behaviour sounds perfectly normal to me for a juvenile . One of the key things to remember with training for all puppies/dogs of whatever breed, not just Labs, is that it is only applicable under a certain set of parameters, for instance if you train in the kitchen the training doesn't initially transfer to the garden so you have to start again . Once you take the pup to a new environment you need to practice your training in the new environment. I would not leave any dog with the lady in question as she seems to have no idea with regard to canine behaviour - I'm just grateful that I have 2 carers for mine furry friwnds who are amazing
Well, I'd say it's normal behaviour...and you did well to ditch the prospective dog care person that couldn't see that, but (there is a BUT ). Why did you let her do this? Why wasn't she a) on a lead until you knew she was calm and she could listen to you; or failing that b) put on a lead within 30 seconds of it being obvious she wasn't listening to you? So, yes - it's normal for a young Labrador to be a complete hooligan in someone else's home. It's not normal (in my view anyway) to let her pretty much run riot for 10 - 15 minutes. Dogs do what they get to do (and enjoy doing). The thing to do with a young Labrador is just stopping them doing it. Not 'correcting' them, or any such thing. If they are not listening to you such that you can reward them making the right choices, put them on a lead and stop them getting it wrong.
Thank you to everyone for the replies. It does give me reassurance that we aren't dealing with anything too out of the ordinary. To answer the above response, I realized my initial post was not super clear on the off leash and time aspect. The lady asked that we take her off the leash so we did. We did stop her from doing each one when it was happening. The outbursts were only 5-10 seconds each over the course of 10-15 minutes. We did not let her go wild for 15 minutes straight. She would settle after stopping/correcting her and do the subsequent actions a few minutes later. It was probably less than 30 seconds of crazy and the rest either normal exploring or laying around.
