# Teenager or just being naughty???



## Elsa Cholla's Mom (Feb 8, 2016)

Being a teenager and testing his limits. My Elsa likes to invent and play games with me, often ones inconvenient to my activities. Pick and choose your battles and be consistent. And always back up your No with action. Don't let it be an empty threat either. I don't know how often I have just stood there holding my tea towel firmly, looking into Elsa's face with disapproval until she lets go. At 10 1/2 months, I can't open her jaw if she doesn't want it open. You have to outlast them, or out smart them, or compromise. In case of the tea towels, (which only occasionally get left within reach), I now just look her in the eyes and say, Treat? And she thinks for a moment and lets go. Then we go get a treat. It doesn't make her steal them any more than before. 
You may want to increase ways to use up that excess energy that comes with that age. I got up to 4 walks a day for awhile, now it's one long one and some evening fetching at home. Elsa is already calming down, for most of the time.


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## mylissyk (Feb 25, 2007)

He's a puppy! All totally normal for a 6 month old puppy. Don't get angry with him, just keep training and encouraging the things you want him to do, redirect away from the things you don't. And in the meantime, laugh at his silliness! (fyi, 6 months is nowhere near old enough to be solid in "knowing" his boundaries)


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## glenhaven504 (Sep 4, 2007)

Sounds like a teenager to me. I have been going through the same thing myself. Mickey is 16 mths and seems to forget some of his behaviors and commands. Just keep at it and I think that it will change again.

Do you know how to delete a post

Glenhaven 504


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## Piper_the_goldenpuppy (Aug 26, 2016)

mylissyk said:


> He's a puppy! All totally normal for a 6 month old puppy. Don't get angry with him, just keep training and encouraging the things you want him to do, redirect away from the things you don't. And in the meantime, laugh at his silliness! (fyi, 6 months is nowhere near old enough to be solid in "knowing" his boundaries)


Totally agree with this. You still have a puppy, and will for quite some time! Your pup is only just now entering his teenage phase, which can last well into the 1st year. At 6 months of age, you have just barely set the stage for boundaries. You have only just begun to teach your pup appropriate expectations for behaviors. It can be bewildering for pawrents, because suddenly you get your puppy out of landshark phase and have a nice pup for a couple of months, and then they enter this phase. 

Its important to be consistent and continue training your pup. Show him the boundaries and continue to enforce them. But remember he's still a baby and enjoy this time because it goes by way too fast. 

Also, things like socks being out are super tempting for a puppy. Socks are the best for dogs. If you found $50 dollars on the ground, would you be tempted to pick it up?


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## aesthetic (Apr 23, 2015)

Kaizer will be 15 months on Sunday and he's recently decided that he loves having our wood furniture in his mouth (it's insane, we've never had this issue before AND we just got him a whole bunch of new chews). And his new thing is to back-up every time we tell him to sit. Or if we're outdoors, he'll look at us and then look away and go sniff some grass. Lovely


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## jinni1980 (Jul 22, 2016)

Thanks all. 
I know he is still puppy & I don't get upset or angry to him  I am the kind of person don't set too high expectation so no need to get angry to him, usually I tell him he's being silly. 

As you all said, I will keep training, training and training. At the moment, he seems to listen when it is convenient to him, but I will be stay calm & be consistent. At the end of day, he is my baby who sleeps like angle. 

Oh. I don't leave socks on the floor or table. Jon actually jumps & grab socks from cloth line. But you are right. Since it is his new things & I should find other place to hang them. Remove the chance = less trouble for each other i guess.


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## Sweet Girl (Jun 10, 2010)

Elsa Cholla's Mom said:


> Being a teenager and testing his limits.


This, to me, is exactly it in a nutshell. The important thing, as it sounds like you are dealing with well, is making sure to reinforce the limits at this stage. Patience, consistency in training, patience. Don't respond to the demand barking - do the exact opposite of what he wants. Turn your back on him and don't make eye contact. Stay very calm. Be really boring. And just keep everything like socks out of his reach. If you need to close doors, close doors. Keep him where you can watch him so he can't get into things. This phase does pass - almost all of us have gone through it to some extent. It really is just like a teenaged kid who suddenly wants to start testing his independence, starts talking back, and needs to be gently reminded whose home he's living in and under what rules.


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## -ALBUS- (May 5, 2016)

In theory, I agree with all of you, but in practice, it's a lot harder to "not get mad" and "be patient" when you're outside and your 6-month-old puppy is relentlessly mauling you with an excitement level of 11 and non-stop barking, growling, jumping and snapping. That's what happened a little while ago, and my clothes are shredded and my arms are bruised and bleeding.

Sorry, just venting, but we had a really tough landshark phase with Albus in the 2-3 month range, then he definitely made some improvements, but he still has periodic episodes like what I just described. 

I took him on his normal walk this morning, put in the crate for his normal morning nap, came home at lunch like I normally do, went through our normal midday routine (training, feeding, playing, chilling, outside to eliminate, back in to the crate). When I took him out to pee/poop he completely wigged out. 

Normally, I'd just bring him back in the house, but since I had to go back to work and knew he'd be in the crate for 4.5 hours, I stayed out there far too long waiting for him to poop. It was non-stop biting (extremely hard) for a solid 20 minutes. 

In retrospect I should've never let it go on that long, but I definitely "got mad" and "wasn't patient" towards the end. We know Goldens are landsharks but we feel we've struggled with this more than most people. A lot of people on GRF have gone through intense mouthing phases (maybe that's what causes them to seek out help online and end up here) but we've talked to many Golden owners in real-life and few have experienced what we have. Anyways, the point is, at 6 months Albus should know that what he was doing is unacceptable. I admit I grabbed the scruff of his neck and yelled at him. (It didn't help one bit; just seemed to frustrate us both more.) At one point, he was so completely out of control that I had to physically pin him down so that neither of us would get hurt. (Of course, this didn't help one bit either.)

The end of the story is that he ended up back in the crate, without having pooped, with me back at work. I'll find out how he made out in about 45 minutes. I couldn't stay out there all day. 

(One quick note. We've had the driest summer in recorded history in the Boston area. In the whole 4+ months Albus has been with us, it virtually hasn't rained. Today, though, during this episode, it was raining hard. It was one of the first times he's been outside in heavy rain for an extended period of time possibly ever. I feel like he didn't like it, wanted to be inside, and when I stayed out there asking him to go potty, he just wasn't having it...) 

Sorry to hijack the thread but I just needed to vent. I'm just really concerned because I've cultivated a great relationship with Albus over the last four months, but occasional episodes like this make me feel so terrible and concerned that it will hurt our relationship. Hopefully he's cool when I get home and doesn't hold it against me.


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## Altairss (Sep 7, 2012)

-ALBUS- said:


> . Anyways, the point is, at 6 months Albus should know that what he was doing is unacceptable. I admit I grabbed the scruff of his neck and yelled at him. (It didn't help one bit; just seemed to frustrate us both more.) At one point, he was so completely out of control that I had to physically pin him down so that neither of us would get hurt. (Of course, this didn't help one bit either.)
> 
> Sorry to hijack the thread but I just needed to vent. I'm just really concerned because I've cultivated a great relationship with Albus over the last four months, but occasional episodes like this make me feel so terrible and concerned that it will hurt our relationship. Hopefully he's cool when I get home and doesn't hold it against me.


At 6 months they don't know what they are doing, not consistently. While we often equate dogs to humans they are really very different in how they learn and how old they are before they are consistent. We often expect more from a puppy then what they are capable of and we put our conceptions of how they should be acting. As humans you see us loose our tempers and revert to that type of force. Does it harm our relationship with the dog? Yes. Does it break their trust in us. Sadly yes. The more often we do this the less trust they will have in us and the more likely they will revert to behaviors we don't want as soon as we are away from them or they are out of our reach. They do not KNOW why we suddenly were so mean to them especially as puppies they often do not put their behavior together with our punishment. All they know is that we hurt them and that means they will not trust us and this impacts their willingness to please us.

I had a behaviorist explain to me it would be like slapping a toddler for not being able to drink their milk out of a regular cup without spilling it. Sometimes our expectations of actions and behaviors are often not realistic. It doesn't mean you can't get past this but it means it will be a lot harder for you to earn his trust. And he may hold back from full trust for a very long time. Keep repeating punishments that severally break trust with the dog and you can damage your relationship with them. I would suggest finding a really good trainer, learn how to work with the dog and see what behaviors are actually frustration on your dogs part. His behavior to me was a very frustrated dog that was trying to let you know something but you did not understand what he needed and like a over stimulated baby he had a meltdown and then you had one.


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## -ALBUS- (May 5, 2016)

Altairss said:


> ...especially as puppies they often do not put their behavior together with our punishment...


Thanks for the honest and polite reply. I know I handled this particular situation poorly, so you could've just called me an idiot and moved on. I know you were trying to take it easy on me.

I definitely agree with the spirt of what you wrote. I knew people would not approve of how the situation was handled, but I posted it anyway. I am not at all an advocate for physical punishment or negative reinforcement.

But, with that said, I'm not sure I agree that 6-month old puppy doesn't have the mental capacity to comprehend cause and effect. If they can't put punishments together with bad behavior, how can they put rewards together with good behavior? This was not a matter of me "punishing" him after the fact. This was about as clear an action/reaction correlation as you could imagine. I'm extremely nice to him all the time (possibly too nice, according to experienced trainers and his breeder). So, I'm calm, then he bites me extremely hard, repeatedly, and I get mad. When he's not biting, I'm not mad. When he is biting, I'm mad. Albus definitely understand concepts more complex than this. 

And let's be clear. We're not talking about garden variety mouthing. We're talking about clothes being shredded, skin being broken, bruises being impressed, blood being drawn. This doesn't happen very much anymore, but when it does, it's bad. If you could see my girlfriend's arms, you may feel differently. Experienced dog people are legitimately shocked when they see her. She's literally had co-workers take her aside and ask her if she's being abused at home.



Altairss said:


> I had a behaviorist explain to me it would be like slapping a toddler for not being able to drink their milk out of a regular cup without spilling it.


This isn't a great analogy. If I punished Albus for chewing a table leg, or jumping on the couch, or peeing on the rug, or ripping open a pillow, I'd agree. Those behaviors, like spilling milk, don't hurt anyone. What was happening here was on a completely different level. I'm an adult male and I'm still stronger than the dog, so I could hold my own. If he did this to my 8-year-old nephew, he could cause a very serious injury. When he does this to my girlfriend, she's in pain for days if not weeks. If he did this to a stranger, he might have to be put down. If a toddler spills milk on a stranger, he's not going to be executed.

And again, we've had "normal" puppy biting incidents. No big deal. We've also had a small number of really over-the-top violent outbursts, and this was one of them. Not sure if you caught this, but when I said I pinned him down, I also said it was honestly for both of our safety. He was jumping as high as he could, on a hill with uneven footing, and thrashing his head emphatically. He needed to be restrained so that he didn't seriously hurt me or himself.



Altairss said:


> His behavior to me was a very frustrated dog that was trying to let you know something but you did not understand what he needed and like a over stimulated baby he had a meltdown and then you had one.


Completely agree with this assessment. He was frustrated. I knew at the time that he was frustrated. It seemed to me like he didn't want to be outside anymore (after about 30 seconds of heavy rain). So, should I have acknowledged his frustrations and taken him back in the house? I didn't have the luxury of doing that. I had to go back to work. I had 15 minutes, and what he didn't know was that if he went back in the house without pooping, he was going to have to hold it in the crate for 4.5 hours. He poops at lunch every day like clockwork. I didn't want to put him in the crate without him having eliminated. I felt that giving him the chance to eliminate was more important than his frustration. Overstimulated babies have meltdowns, yes, but that doesn't change the fact that there are sometimes frustrating things that their parents still have to make them do because it's in their best interest, even if they don't know any better.

Also, I'm not losing sleep over it. He was fine when I got home after work and has been completely wonderful today, still begging me to cuddle him, pet him, and sleep at my feet while I'm sitting on the couch. I don't think there are any hard feelings on either side of the equation.


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## Anele (Dec 12, 2014)

-ALBUS- said:


> But, with that said, I'm not sure I agree that 6-month old puppy doesn't have the mental capacity to comprehend cause and effect. If they can't put punishments together with bad behavior, how can they put rewards together with good behavior? This was not a matter of me "punishing" him after the fact. This was about as clear an action/reaction correlation as you could imagine. I'm extremely nice to him all the time (possibly too nice, according to experienced trainers and his breeder). So, I'm calm, then he bites me extremely hard, repeatedly, and I get mad. When he's not biting, I'm not mad. When he is biting, I'm mad. Albus definitely understand concepts more complex than this.
> 
> And let's be clear. We're not talking about garden variety mouthing. We're talking about clothes being shredded, skin being broken, bruises being impressed, blood being drawn. This doesn't happen very much anymore, but when it does, it's bad. If you could see my girlfriend's arms, you may feel differently. Experienced dog people are legitimately shocked when they see her. She's literally had co-workers take her aside and ask her if she's being abused at home.
> 
> Completely agree with this assessment. He was frustrated. I knew at the time that he was frustrated. It seemed to me like he didn't want to be outside anymore (after about 30 seconds of heavy rain). So, should I have acknowledged his frustrations and taken him back in the house? I didn't have the luxury of doing that. I had to go back to work. I had 15 minutes, and what he didn't know was that if he went back in the house without pooping, he was going to have to hold it in the crate for 4.5 hours. He poops at lunch every day like clockwork. I didn't want to put him in the crate without him having eliminated. I felt that giving him the chance to eliminate was more important than his frustration. Overstimulated babies have meltdowns, yes, but that doesn't change the fact that there are sometimes frustrating things that their parents still have to make them do because it's in their best interest, even if they don't know any better.


6 month old dogs can "know" it's not the right thing to do but still act out anyway. They may have knowledge but they often lack impulse control (it's part of their developmental stage). Those are two very different things.

I was really worried about my dog at that age. He didn't leave us bloody but we were very bruised. What I learned about the bruising (from a trainer) is that part of it is the angle/gravity working its magic which contributes to it. In our case, they happened when he jumped up at us, pulling down on our skin. It sounds like, at least some of the time, this is true for you as well.

I understand, very well, about feeling pressure for him to go poo on a schedule. While I didn't have that issue, I have had similar issues with my human kids-- like we are all set to leave for an appointment and suddenly my 4 y.o. decides she wants to buckle all of her stuffed animals into seat belts. It's that awful balance of reality, of the "musts" in life, while dealing with a young, immature, still-very-much-developing creature. In those instances it's better to just try to think of the big picture-- if he goes poo in his crate, it's not the end of the world, if I'm late for my appointment, we will figure it out.

It's really important to find a trainer who is not panicked by this behavior AND who loves loves your dog. I had several trainers, too, and the ones who did me the most disservice were the ones who panicked. My friend volunteers at an animal shelter and she said the behavior was VERY typical of adolescent dogs. She has an 8 month old Havanese. Excellent breeder, goes to a great training place every week, tons of toys and exercise, my friend does daily training, etc. and guess what? HE is like this, too. It's just that he's small so you don't really notice.

What I would work on now is to help him learn to have a soft mouth when aroused. That is key. Work on that in training. If he jumps on you, hold the leash away or step on it so he can't get to you. Teach him to jump on you on command, so that you can cue him to do this when he gets the crazy look. Train, train, train the basics so that you can redirect him. And of course, consistently work on developing impulse control in all sorts of situations. Don't compare your dog to others. They are all starting at different points so honor your starting point.

My dog is 21 months now and amazing. He has a very soft mouth-- lady at Petco gave him a treat and said he was so gentle with it. Does not jump and bite anymore. He is very confident in situations, which is what you want-- a confident dog, so that he can take everything in stride. He's still exuberant and mischievous but he's the center of our world and we wouldn't want him any other way.


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