Episode #188 Raising a Teenage Dog: Tips and Milestones

Ever wondered how to build a strong, joyful relationship with your teenage dog? Join us on the Puppy Training Podcast as we share Bella's delightful journey, celebrating her growth and training milestones. From her excited greetings and love for belly rubs to her outdoor fun with Baxter, Bella's personality shines through. You'll hear how we successfully tackled house training, her cleverness in finding appropriate chew toys, and her endless joy in splashing around in her doggy pool. Through Bella’s fearless and energetic nature, we revel in every small win and milestone, reminding us all why we cherish our furry companions.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This is the Puppy Training Podcast, episode 188, raising a Teenage Dog. This podcast is designed to help you on your journey of becoming best friends through love and learning, as you train your own dog from home, and I'm here to help you every step of the way. This is the Puppy Training Podcast and I'm your host, amy Jensen. This is the Puppy Training Podcast and I'm your host, amy Jensen. Hello everybody, welcome to the Puppy Training Podcast. I am so glad you're here. This means that you are investing time in wanting to train your dog, which any training you do is not wasted. I think it's all good and important in wanting to build a relationship with your dog, which is what we are all about. So today I want to share our progress with little Bella. We've had Bella since March the end of March and she's coming up on six months of age and I thought you know what, let's do a little update. So we've been doing some social media with her. You've seen some video clips of her. One of them that we did recently was on reactivity and I want to do a follow-up on that. So, first of all, we love little Bella. She is so much fun. Do you guys feel that about your dogs. I know when we get a new dog we have it takes some time to learn their personality and it takes some time to figure out how they fit into the family. But first and foremost, we absolutely adore little Bella. She squeals with excitement when she sees us. So when she wakes up she'll take her little snuggle puppy in her mouth and then she'll wiggle around and squeal with excitement and she does that for every member of my family. So she'll say hi to me and then, once she goes potty outside, of course, then she'll come back in and she'll go find my husband. She'll run right up to where he is First thing. That's what she wants to do is go say hi to him because she loves him. And then when my girls come down for the morning, she does the same thing to them. So she just loves our family and she shows that by she taught this to herself. She just picks up her little snuggle puppy, holds it in her mouth and then squeals. Picks up her little snuggle puppy, holds it in her mouth and then squills. It's the cutest thing. I had to get a video of it the other day in case it goes away, because this is a behavior she chose herself, and she's done it every day, and so I'm just going to see how long this lasts.

Speaker 1: 2:13

But Bella also adores belly rubs, so that's something I've learned about her. She's to the point now where she will flop over when she sees you. She'll just kind of roll over on her back and be like, okay, I'm ready for my belly rub, go ahead, um, which is awesome. She also loves a good game of tug. She loves squeaky toys. She loves to chase things. So if I toss the toy in the yard, she loves to go get it and we'll bring it back. Not always right to me, sometimes she wants to go lay down with it, but other times she's like, yeah, let's play. She also is getting really good at relaxing on the floor for naps with Baxter. Now, that didn't start from day one, but we're starting to see glimpses of it. When she gets tired, instead of me always putting her away in the crate or putting her in her pen, she's starting to settle down on her own and just lay out on the tile next to Baxter and take a nap, which is really fun to see.

Speaker 1: 3:01

She's a mastered house training. At this point, I would say maybe mastering is a little bit of a strong word, but we haven't had any accidents for a good month or so. She's, uh, successfully going outside to go to the bathroom. And a bigger bonus Well, another big bonus cause they're both big bonuses is the hat. When she wants to choose something, she is seeking out her toys. That, to me, is a huge win. When we get to the point where she's out in the house and she has freedom to do whatever she wants and she's seeking out appropriate dog toys to chew on, that's awesome, right? She's not going for shoes anymore, she's not going for the sofa anymore or the carpet. Some of you might be in that phase. Still, I promise you just follow our training and it will work. You will get to this point where your dog is doing similar things to Bella Now.

Speaker 1: 3:48

She loves to play outside, she loves chasing, which works at our house. It's a huge win-win because Baxter loves to be chased. So he'll get a toy and he'll squeak it and kind of get her attention, and then he'll take off running and she just adores chasing him and they'll just circle. They'll just go in my backyard and run and run. Uh, they love it. We had some tunnels out there for a little while, but she's outgrown them, she's too big. So the tunnels have since disappeared, but she used to chase him around and then dive into the tunnels.

Speaker 1: 4:16

This little girl is bold and fearless. She just um is all in at whatever activity she's doing, especially water. So it's summer here. It's hot. Today, actually, I think we're supposed to get into triple digits. I'm sorry for all of you who live somewhere where triple digits is normal. For you it's really hot. I'm realizing that today. But we have a doggy pool and we'll fill it up with water and she jumps all in Like there's no hesitation. She is all four feet in the water, digging at it, splashing at it, creating a huge mess, and she just loves it. So she lives life to the fullest. She has so much good energy. That's just happy. Like you just can't really be sad around little Bella. She just is joy. I should have named her joy maybe, because that's what she is. She's just bold and confident until she's not. There are a few times when she gets scared of something and she'll literally want me to. And super cute.

Speaker 1: 5:11

At this point we have taken her through our six weeks of basic training. So that's our puppy kindergarten. She learned basics like sit down, stay, come, uh, leave it. We worked really hard on leave it. She's doing really well with that one. Uh, we worked on drop it. Uh. Then we went through our six week intermediate training with her. She helped me teach that class. So if you are new to our program and want to follow little Bella, you can go watch the basic training. There's six weeks of a class with Bella on that and then there's six weeks of classes with our intermediate training where you can see Bella doing some of the demoing. And now we are working on our AKC home manners title. So that's the course that we're currently teaching and she is my helper. So we are practicing things that we use around the house every day.

Speaker 1: 5:53

Her favorite is go to bed. So when we are in the kitchen she knows that if she runs over to the dog bed that she gets rewarded for that and she's getting really good at it. She knows to just run right over there. That's the first place she goes, which is what we want her to do. I don't want to have to cue that. I just want her to know automatically that if she wants something out of the kitchen, then the way to get that is to go lay on this bed. So her patience is increasing and she does a really good job waiting. But if we take too long then she'll, on occasion she'll just kind of jump off the bed, walk over to us, kind of peek at us from around the corner of the Island, if you will, and then she'll run and hop back on her bed. So, if you will, and then she'll run and hop back on her bed. So it's almost like, hey, I'm trying really hard. Do you remember that I'm over here? Can you please reward me for this? It's the cutest thing.

Speaker 1: 6:41

We're also working on leash walking currently, so she's pretty good at releasing the tension. If she starts to pull, we'll just turn and walk the other way. We've done some circling. She knows that if there's tension on the leash, it's her job to release it. She gets rewarded for that. We worked really hard on leash walking in our house first, and then we practiced in our yard and now we're to the point she's fully vaccinated. At this point we are going to parks, so now we're practicing in public spaces with distractions, so there's soccer games happening or kids on the playground or, um, you know, people walking on the pathways with us. There's other dogs out there. So we're currently working at the parks. Uh, I still have to circle sometimes, or we'll do.

Speaker 1: 7:21

She loves the go sniff walk, so I'll put her on a longer leash and she gets to sniff a lot and then I'm just rewarding all the check-ins. So anytime she looks at me that's a reward and she can go back to sniffing. So she's getting pretty good at the check-ins, which I love. She can go back to sniffing, so she's getting pretty good at the check-ins, which I love. I love to just let the dogs go sniff and then they check in lots of check-ins, because every time they check in they start to walk right next to me. So our pattern lately has been we go to the parks um, or a park, I should say and I let her acclimate to the area first. I just kind of stand there, she gets to sniff around a little bit, um, as soon as she's willing to look back at me in my direction, then okay, let's start walking, we'll move forward, and then I reward check-ins. And as we get to the end part of our walk, the time that we're out walking, uh, it turns more into an attention walk. She'll just kind of stay right next to me and I reward her for that. So it's a combination, I would say, of go sniff, check-ins right and then some good, solid attention walking. She's really doing quite well with it. I'm super proud of her.

Speaker 1: 8:18

So I have noticed, though, in the past few weeks that she's starting to react to things. So you might find on social media if you're following me on social media, you'll see a little clip of her barking at a stroller, or I noticed one. Wheels or scooters they come up on you fast, so if they scare her, I noticed that she barks at those. So anything kind of with a will I've tried to work on that was what I wrote down in my journal was okay. Bella reacted to this today at the park. So let's focus on things with wheels, um, and so we have. We've just been working on it when we go to the park. If I see something with a tire in the vicinity then and she sees it I just say let's go and we turn and walk away, and I reward her for turning away from it. And it's only been what? Two weeks and she's doing phenomenally well. She's learning. Oh, I can see that and just walk away from it. And we haven't had any barking in the last few sessions at the park. So we're seeing some success there.

Speaker 1: 9:15

So if you have a puppy that's reacting to things, don't panic. It's pretty normal that when they hit adolescence they start to um, explore new behaviors, and Bella's natural reaction when she sees something she's unsure about is to let out a little vocalization. That's okay, we just notice it, we write down what she reacted to and then how far away I had to kind of walk her away to get her to stop worrying about it, and then from there we just practice. So now I see something in the distance, about 50 feet away. I noticed that she's maybe going to start to get worried about it. So I just say let's go, we turn and walk away from it. She gets paid for that and now she's relaxing around these things. We saw a bike just the other day and it actually came within about 10 feet of us. She was just fine. So I'm seeing some success there, um, and it's working. So we have a protocol for that.

Speaker 1: 10:01

If you guys need any help with reactivity, please reach out to us and we're happy to help you with that, because it is again one of those behaviors that we stress about. It's embarrassing to us, possibly, or it makes us anxious to go to the park with our dog because we don't want our dog to be unruly. But as they go through this adolescent phase or just any new phase really, uh, this might crop up and there's ways that we can help them feel better about the situation. So super proud of her. She's awesome, she's a fast learner and she loves to work. So that is helpful, that she is a hard worker, that we can overcome some of these things. She, I would say, loves her people fiercely. So we are her people, our family.

Speaker 1: 10:40

She's fine seeing other people, but she still prefers for them not to touch her. She's one that I've found must build trust first. Hey, you know what? I get it. She adores playing with other dogs, though. So if you bring a dog with you, you are on her a-list and automatically a trusted friend. Isn't that cute? So if you bring a dog, I've noticed that she's friends with that person, even if they're a stranger, but they have a dog. She's like, okay, I trust you, she doesn't have a dog. Then you're going to need to build some trust with Bella first before you can touch her.

Speaker 1: 11:09

So we're still working on that, seeing if we can get her to warm up to strangers, but she doesn't bark at them, she doesn't mind seeing strangers. She's super happy to be at the park with these other people. It's just, if they reach out and wanna touch her, then she kind of just maybe backs away a little bit. 100% okay, and we respect that. So, and people are really good about it, they're super nice about it. They'll let her come up and sniff them and I just say, hey, please just don't reach out to her, um, unless she, you know, we see signs that she wants it. So she's just a beautiful soul. I cannot tell you how much I adore this dog's personality. She has some spunk, but she's also so sweet.

Speaker 1: 11:47

Now, things we are currently working on and maybe you can relate Uh, we are working on doorbell behaviors and hearing neighbors next door. So if we're out in our yard and she hears somebody, again she's starting to alert. That's just the age and phase that we're in. So we're working on again things like that at home that we're now doing at the parks. If she's starting to alert to things, we just turn and walk away so that she can learn. That's the new pattern of behavior. So we're right there with you working on these things If you're in the same boat as us, you guys. Dog training is a journey and we are super honored to be on this journey with you.

Speaker 1: 12:16

I love what I do. I love that I have the opportunity to coach people on how to train their dogs. We're not looking for perfection I don't expect that. I'm not perfect, um but I do want to teach my dogs good behavior and how to live in a household with humans. It's not natural to them Some of the rules that we have in our society, in our homes. Right, they're dogs and they do dog behavior. But we can set them up for success and show them. This behavior gets you a reward, this behavior gets you attention. This behavior gets you food in the kitchen. Right, and then they choose that good behavior because it's worth it to them. So we can show them best practices and then how to be successful at it. But most importantly, here at Baxter Bella, we focus on helping you build a relationship with these amazing creatures that we call dogs. Dogs offer so much unconditional love. They are a joy to have in our homes and that's it.

Speaker 1: 13:11

That's our update on a little Bella. That's our update on teenagers. Um, if you have any questions with your adolescent dogs, please reach out to us. We have courses, we have classes, we have live one-on-one video sessions where we can see you working and interacting with your dog and offer you some coaching tips on how to maybe make that better, and we answer email questions that you send us. We have um free social media tips that we send out, so follow us on social media Instagram, facebook, youtube Um, we just really want to help you be successful at living with a dog. So we're enjoying our time with little Bella. We also love our other dogs, of course, and just want you to know that we're right here with you on this training journey. Have a great week, you guys, and happy training. If you have a question about anything you heard on this podcast or any other puppy training question, visit my site, baxter and Bellacom, to contact me.