Why Good Training Appears To Vanish
Between six and nine months, your puppy's brain is being remodelled. Hormones rise, the social world becomes intensely interesting, and behaviours that looked finished — recall, loose lead, polite greetings — wobble or collapse. Owners often read this as stubbornness or spite, but an adolescent dog genuinely finds other dogs, scents, and movement harder to resist than he did at four months, and his impulse control is temporarily worse, not better. The encouraging truth is that the early training is not gone; it is buried under a developmental stage that passes. Dogs whose owners keep training kindly through adolescence come out the other side with the skills intact, while dogs whose training stops here often stay stuck at this stage's manners.
Shrink The Job, Raise The Pay
The core fix is embarrassingly simple: make the work easier and the wages better. Practise recall in the garden and quiet corners again, not across a park full of dogs. Shorten training sessions to a few minutes, several times a day, and reward with things your adolescent actually values right now — real food, a thrown ball, a game of tug — rather than the dry biscuit that impressed a twelve-week-old. Reinforce check-ins obsessively: every time he glances back at you on a walk, unprompted, pay him. You are not bribing a dog who should know better; you are competing in a market where adolescence just raised every other bid, and for a few months you have to outbid it.
Management While The Brain Catches Up
Training rebuilds skills; management stops him rehearsing the opposite ones. A long line on open ground lets him range and sniff while making 'recall is optional' impossible to practise. Keep greetings with other dogs brief and on lead for now if his manners have turned bouncy and deaf, and choose walking routes where success is likely over routes that stage daily failures. At home, go back to puppy infrastructure without shame — gates, a lead trailing indoors, chews provided before he finds his own entertainment in the skirting board. None of this is regression as defeat; it is scaffolding that comes down again as the adult brain arrives.
What Not To Do With A Teenage Dog
Escalating punishment is the trap of this phase. A dog corrected harshly for ignoring a recall learns that coming back predicts trouble, and the recall gets worse while looking like attitude. Avoid testing him in situations designed to prove a point, avoid long frustrated lectures he cannot parse, and avoid comparing him to the puppy he was at five months or to the finished adult dog next door. Also watch total workload: adolescents need more sleep than their energy suggests, and an overtired teenage dog in the evening is often the worst-behaved version of himself. If you see genuine behaviour change beyond teenage wobble — new aggression, fear, or anxiety — involve your vet and a qualified behaviour professional rather than assuming it is just the phase.
One Plan Across Every Handler
Adolescents exploit gaps between handlers faster than puppies do, because they have the confidence to try. If one person practises garden recalls with good pay while another shouts him in from the park and punishes the delay, the dog learns contexts, not cues. Household handlers can record which cues are currently wobbling, which rewards are working this month, and where each practice session happened in KinsLe's Care Teams, so the rebuilding plan stays one plan until the adult dog emerges.