Teenagers get a bad rap — join me and Erin for a conversation about what you can really expect and how to survive canine adolescence and then come out with an awesome sports dog on the other side.

 Transcription

Melisa Breau: This is Melissa Breau, and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today I have Erin Lynes here with me to talk about surviving canine adolescence. Hi, Erin. Welcome back to the podcast.

Erin Lynes: Hi, Melissa. Thanks for having me.

Absolutely. To start us out, you want to remind listeners a little about you and your current canine crew. Sure. I'm up here in Quesnel, BC, Canada. I have a dock diving and dog sport training facility called Eromit Air Academy. And we're just winding down our outdoor training season here now. So I also teach online, of course, for the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. So that's where all the future lessons and webinars and such are going for the rest of the year.

I have a fairly large canine crew, so I will not recap all of them. However, you may be interested in knowing about the adolescent dogs in my family right now. And I've got three of them. So the youngest one is Arwen. She's a yellow lab, and she is a little over a year and a half now and right smack in all the adolescent behaviors. And I've also got Kenji, who is a few months older than Arwen, and he's also a full blown adolescent male.

And then I've got the beloved Beagle creature, Leroy, who is just over two, and he's coming out of adolescence and is starting to become a very lovely dog again. He's our little beacon of adolescent hope here in the family and showing the youngsters how to get it done and the correct direction to develop.

Melissa Breau: Funny stuff. All right, so since we are talking about adolescence, you mentioned some ages in there.

When do we officially begin to consider a puppy an adolescent, and then when do you kind of phase them out of adolescence and consider them an adult? So the popular consensus in dogs is that adolescent starts roughly around puberty and extends to adulthood, which is very vague and depending on the size and breed and all those sorts of things. But in general, I consider it to be in this six months to two years range that covers most breeds and size of dogs in our demographic.

Smaller dogs probably. It's a little tighter window than that, but bigger dogs often last quite long into their adolescence. What changes do we usually see? Oh, goodness, it varies a lot. So we see basically little immature puppy behaviors in big dog bodies. So the biggest clues are often the disconnect between the brain and the body. And you think you should know this by now. And why you're so big.

And from a subjective point of view, it's when cute behaviors maybe become a little bit more like annoying behaviors. So you'll think, totally swear this puppy didn't jump up anymore, and now it's like it's jumping up all the time. And less self control is sort of a trademark of adolescence. So behaviors that you had worked hard on with your puppy and they were starting to really get, and you were getting really proud of and they were doing really well, kind of backslide a little bit, particularly in that self control window, leash walking recalls jumping up and mouthing.

Sometimes even like house training type behaviors start to decline a little bit again. We often see bigger feelings about things that did not normally get a big reaction from your dog before. So this could be like barking at strangers or barking at plastic bags. They see when they are out on a walk, and they never really would have noticed that sort of thing before. It could be things like spending an extreme amount of time sniffing, peeing 42 million times every time you go for a walk. So lots of the changes we see in adolescent dogs are things that they maybe did that you thought you already had trained or that they'd grown out of and then flare up with exclamation marks around this time in their life.

Melissa Breau: Do you try to preempt that degradation of skills at all with management, or do you, like, kind of try and wait and see, see what problems are going to be problems before you start making changes?

Erin Lynes: That's a really good question. So being prepared to act upon any behaviors that you see that are popping out is important. You want to be kind of aware of what sort of changes might happen so that you can be ready for them. And you don't necessarily need to manage things well in advance, but you may need to keep up with skills or train new skills so that you're prepared to be able to manage them when they do arrive.

And we kind of make it sound like all teenage adolescent dogs are horrible and they're going to do 25 million terrible things all the time. And they usually don't. Usually, each individual dog has a couple of areas that are more challenging than others, and we don't specifically know which ones those are going to be. If you have a family history of your dog or, you know, related dogs, maybe you have a bit of a clue about what to expect, but they're all individual, so being overly worried about it, being too proactive is not something that you need to worry about from a management standpoint, but you do want to have some skills on board and make sure they're fresh and refreshed so that you can handle things when they do come up.

Melissa Breau: What do you do if your perfect puppy suddenly doesn't have a recall or begins to show, you know, big feelings about things that were previously a non issue? So that will come up. And what I suggest is having a plan in place for those sorts of things so that you're somewhat ready for them. So, for example, you may not want to try and let your dog just grow out of a recall problem because in the meantime, they're going to be not recalling 42 million times.

They might get into all kinds of mischief. You do want to perhaps consider putting them back on a long line, walking in more controlled environments, reducing the distractions, setting them up for success, which is going to be potentially a lower bar than it was even when they were a younger puppy because of these brain changes that are happening. So the, all the neural rewiring that goes on during adolescence, it's a physical thing in their brain.

It's not necessarily that your teenage dog has grown up and decided that they would not need you around anymore, that your input is irrelevant. It's just that there is a lot going on in their little brains that changes how they process the world. And you want to make it as easy for them, them to be successful, to keep them safe, to prevent rehearsing unwanted behaviors during this time.

So it's depending on what that behavior is that comes up that is challenging. It will slightly change your solution, but just, just being ready for those things and having a plan is a good first step.

Melissa Breau: Awesome. So how do you maybe think about the legs model? What is a legs model? If you could share a little bit about that when you're looking at your adolescent, and how can it kind of make things easier for both the handler and the dog if you kind of think about things that way?

Erin Lynes: The legs model is a model of ethology that has been shared and promoted and taught by Kim Brophy. She's amazing and has taught some webinars and things for FDSA in the past. So if she comes up again, I really encourage people to check out her work. But in short, LEGS is an acronym that stands for Learning, Environment, Genetics and Self. And the LEGS model of family dog mediation of behavior assessment encourages us to ask the question, why about behaviors?

Rather than how? So why does the behavior change as a first layer of intervention before we get to the how do we change it? And coming at it from that perspective, when we consider an adolescent dog under the legs model, we could be thinking about potentially a problematic behavior. So let's take an example behavior so that we can work through it. That adolescent dog that now he's barking at strangers when you go for a walk.

And this is the dog that was always friendly, and he's never done that before. Well, let's look at it from the l perspective. What has he learned? Has he ever had a bad experience with a stranger? Maybe nothing. Maybe there's a potential there that learning history could explain this new behavior. What about the environment? So is this a more stressful environment? Is the environment that the dog is in routinely providing enough outlet for relaxation and recovery from stress?

Are they just kind of borderline stressed all the time and it's expressing itself as this barking at strangers behavior? Is the behavior itself occurring only in specific environments and not others? There's a few different layers of that environmental aspect that we can consider. What about the g, genetics? Is this a barky breed? And until now, he just hasn't been expressing it. And I think one thing about the g when we're thinking about genetics that gets people is that if the puppy hasn't been doing a behavior up until now and they start it at a six months or eight months or one year of age, you may not think of it as having a genetic component, but there are lots of behaviors that don't show themselves, especially breed specific type behaviors and inclinations, until the dog has reached adolescence.

So it's really common for stranger danger type stuff to appear during adolescence from breeds that are not normally stranger friendly. That is totally a possible explanation for a behavior like that. And then the final LEGS category that we use for assessment is the self. And this is really big during adolescence because the self encompasses things like their body size, their hormone status, how they're feeling on that day, if they're feeling, uh, maybe they've got growing pains, or maybe they played fetch too hard the day before and their back is sore, or all of those little individual things that, that directly affect how the dog is feeling.

And that could be a potential explanation for why you're seeing this behavior. And the reason that we want to know a little bit more about why a behavior happens is because it may help us decide if the behavior is even worth changing. In this example, barking at strangers probably is something we don't want to continue. It's not fun to be the stranger, it's not fun to be the human.

It's probably not fun to be the dog in that scenario. So we decide we want to change it, but knowing the specific reason or having a pretty good idea of what the specific reason for why the behavior happens will affect how we do that behavior change, how we manage the dog, all those little elements of how we get back to a successful spot. So from the owner's perspective, from the trainer's perspective, from the dog's perspective, having a little bit more information or working through the potential reasons for a specific behavior is very helpful when potentially leading to a behavior change.

But the other big thing is that it's really helpful from an empathy standpoint. So if you know that your dog is barking at strangers because one time last week, that weird guy down the street waved his hat wrong and it hit your dog in the snout or something, and you're like, well, he has a valid reason for thinking strangers are a little scary now, like that. I'm sorry that happened to you, my friend dog, but we'll work through it and we'll figure out a plan for that.

And that might be a very different thing than if you have an Icelandic Sheepdog and you've just discovered that they bark a lot. So you've got potentially two different reasons for a behavior, and 1 may be something that you can work with more than others, and one might be just like, this is my new life now. I have a barky breed.

Melissa Breau: Fair enough. When you have a dog who's new into adolescence or in adolescence, how do you adapt your day to day with your dog for that, like, period of time? What does life maybe look like with that dog during that time?

Erin Lynes: So adolescent dogs need somebody to make more decisions for them. In general, their emotional part of their brain is not directly wired to their logical thought part of their brain. So they often need. And that frontal cortex, that is what controls the logical decision making processes, is developing much slower than the other parts of the brain.

So we need to be kind of on the lookout for risky behaviors that our adolescent dog may be prone to. They don't know they're taking risks. They just know that they don't care about the end result, and they're going to do this terrible donkey chasing, flying off a cliff when you're on an off leash walk. I can think of a lot of examples, but there's all kinds of things that they might engage in that we should probably be on the lookout out for those behaviors and be a little proactive to prevent them.

But the other big thing that we want to consider in adolescents is their exposure to stress. So stress comes with two sort of different side effects in adolescent dogs. And one is that stress has a bigger effect and takes longer to recover from when they're in that adolescent stage just because of how their brain is wired. And the other thing is that stress degrades the ability of new neural connections to form, so it sort of slows down brain growth.

So by limiting stress or making sure that we don't put our adolescent dogs into situations where they're exposed on a more long term basis to stress, we can make sure that they're able to keep learning, that they're able to recover and, um, very likely have less expression of any sort of problematic behaviors that we're starting to see. So it's going to let us progress faster. Um, and that might mean for our adolescent dogs that even if they were going to lots of trials as a puppy, to be a sidekick and exposed, maybe that has to change a little bit if they're getting too excited.

So keeping in mind that over arousal on the positive end of the spectrum is still a form of stress, so we want to limit that a little bit too. So situations that cause big feelings of any sort are things we want to be really aware of and make sure that they're fairly infrequent and fairly short duration as much as possible. And that really takes some advanced planning and a little bit of, usually a little bit of extra skill development so that those sorts of situations aren't likely to cause big stressful feelings.

Melissa Breau: Are there things that you strategically do or even don't do during this stage? You know, as far as teaching, like sports specific skills or life skills or engagement? Can you talk a little bit, kind of, about what training looks like for your dogs during this phase?

Erin Lynes: Yeah, lots of review happens during this stage. So if you happen to have a puppy that you've been giving a really strong sports foundation for, they've got really good life skills.

Probably adolescence starts to feel like a bit of a review on your end, but for your dog, lots of those behaviors are affecting their brain as if they're learning them for the first time. And that's because their body is a different shape than when they learned it for the first time. So if you can think of some sports specific skills that require a lot of body awareness, maybe like a, maybe you've introduced some form of puppy safe running contacts or specific position changes for obedience.

Your puppy, who's like five months old, has those figured out and they're like, wow, what a prodigy. This is an awesome little puppy. And then they're seven months old and now they can't do it anymore. And it's not always that they're being difficult in the brain. It is often that their body is a different shape than when they learn those behaviors. So reviewing behaviors that take a lot of precision or take a lot of concentration or take a lot of strength are important, but also looking at self control and arousal type behaviors.

So anytime we can positively grow neurons that encourage our adolescent dogs to express self control, we are probably heading in the right direction for the future. And it's harder for them at this stage of development. So we often feel like things are set up to be quite easy for them, but that's what they need to be successful, and we want to see. We want to see success. So simplifying previous training to get success, eliminating situations where they're going to have big inputs of stress, whether it's positive or negative, and then reviewing, or if you don't, it's not.

It's possible that you didn't get your puppy when they were a small, little, teeny sports puppy. You might be addressing some of these things for the first time, and you're often not all that much further behind if that's the case with an adolescent dog, because they have to learn a lot of these behaviors as if they're relearning them anyway. So just teaching them how to manage going from a high arousal situation to a low arousal situation, being patient around food, around people, around thresholds, around toys, teaching them ways to alert you when there are sources of big feelings, triggers in the environment, rather than trying to tackle those on their own. Those are all areas that we can work on in training.

Melissa Breau: I think a lot of the time we hear that phrase, train the dog in front of you. Maybe that applies during adolescence more than any other time in a dog's life. But I'd love to have you talk a little bit about what it looks like in practice. How do we actually apply that advice when we're looking at this teenage dog?

Erin Lynes: Totally, totally true. You need to be rather adaptable when you're the owner or handler of a one of these adolescent dogs. So what it often looks like is getting yourself into a situation where you've had training success before. Maybe you're at the park and you're working on some skills, or you're working outside the agility ring on some skills, and suddenly this is not the day that your puppy is able to respond very well.

So you might find yourself coming up with a plan b or coming up with an evacuation route to get out of there, if that's necessary. So one of the things that I recommend is kind of always having a plan be tucked in your pocket. What happens if your adolescent dog is not responding to cues very quickly or very cleanly, or it seems like they are not even hearing you at all?

Like, is there another exercise you can turn to? Could you create distance to make things easier? Is there a better setting that you could be working on? This in? All of those things are sort of measures of adaptability that we handlers have to consider in advance for our adolescent dogs. And it's what I hope people understand is you're not losing ground when you have to change to a plan b.

So anytime that you're successfully adapting to the struggles that you're young dog is showing you, you're actually making more progress towards your end goals than if you just try to, like, gut it out or push through it. Um, and in the moment, that can be. That can be hard to handle because we all have goals and missions and places we want to be and behaviors we want to see progressing.

Um, but if we can, we can work with our dog's ability in that moment, which does seem to change quite a lot and quite rapidly. Um, adolescent dogs, we will be further ahead in the long run.

Melissa Breau: All right, so you've got a class on this stuff coming up in October. Can you share a little bit more about kind of what you'll cover and maybe who might be interested in joining you?

Erin Lynes: Yeah. I'm so excited for this class. So this class is all about the adolescent dog. It's called The Adolescent Dog: Making a Terrific Teenager. And we are going to have a really positively outcome focused approach to dealing with our little challenging creatures during this stage. So the lectures are broken up into topics that revolve around four sort of main areas of interest for this class. So I've got exercises that will deal with arousal, things like teaching our dog specifically how to get into a higher arousal zone and then how to come down from it, how just to be calmer in general, even if there's exciting things going on, reporting behaviors so that they have a specific strategy for when things are tending to spike their interest, but maybe aren't really appropriate for one of their emotional reactions and also for teaching them how to move with a more controlled level of arousal.

So one of the things our teenage dogs like to do typically, especially our sporty ones, is they like to move fast and big and not with a lot of finesse. So I'm including a few little movement puzzle exercises in there as well so that we can work on that, that disengagement between their brain and their body that needs a lot of help during this timeframe. So one of the other categories is obviously self control games.

So we're going to be working on a lot of things that teenage dogs struggle with. Being around people, being around other dogs, self control around reinforcers and some stationing work so that they can start to see the value and build those little brain neurons that help them become more, more able to control their own movements and feelings. And we've also got a category called proximity games. So of course, our adolescent dogs tend to be a little bit more independent during this phase.

So they might think we're a little less cool than we used to be, and we're going to bring that back with some loose leash walking games. Call or give exercises. I'll teach you how to show your dog that you are interested in the things that they're interested in and that you also discover interesting things so that you, when you're out in the world, you're not the person to be avoided.

You're the person that has all the insider tips. And then the last category of exercises is all about preventing some of the more common behavior challenges that we see in adolescent dogs. So we've got our resource guarding protocol, some information about marking for our teen boys out there that are probably starting to think about those things. Scent distractions. I've got a few games that help with dogs who become very sniffy during adolescence and of course, jumping up and mouthing and those sorts of things.

So we can be proactive on those skills a little bit to help keep those behaviors down. So, the exercises each week will focus a little bit on each of those four main categories, and we've got lots of different things we can do. I will be expecting that gold and silver students probably will be coming into class with already some measure of challenges happening or being a little bit aware of what challenges might be about to happen in their adolescent dog.

And we can sort of direct and put the, the most attention on those areas that need the most work for each of those individual dogs. But there's going to be a lot of information in the class, so even those and enrolling at bronze will have quite a spectrum available to work with that will hopefully be really relevant for, for the average teen dog. Love it. Any final thoughts or maybe key points you want to leave folks with?

I don't want people to be scared of their adolescent dog. There is a lot out there that tells us that adults are that human teenagers are hard to handle and that dog teenagers are hard to handle, and to a certain degree, that is not incorrect. However, they are also a great opportunity to meet your dog again. So when you do start to see those breed specific behaviors coming out or those slightly more challenging behaviors come out, that's kind of when the fun dog train gets to start, you guys, so we can have some fun with our adolescent dogs.

Really take this opportunity to build up your relationship with them and give them some skills that are going to last them a lifetime.

Melissa Breau: I like that. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Erin, thanks so much for having me. Absolutely. And thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. We will be back next week with presenters from the upcoming one day conference on Senior Dogs.

If you haven't already, subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by Bensound.com. The track featured here is called Buddy. Editing provided by Chris Lang.

Thanks again for tuning in and happy training.

 Credits

Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called "Buddy." Audio editing provided by Chris Lang.

Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!