Episode #276 The Teenage Puppy: Surviving Adolescent Regression (6–18 Months)

Your puppy was doing so well… and then suddenly they stopped listening.

In this episode, we break down one of the most frustrating — and completely normal — stages of dog development: adolescence. Between 6 and 18 months, many puppies begin testing boundaries, ignoring cues, losing focus, and acting as if all previous training disappeared overnight.

We cover:

•  Why adolescent regression happens 
•  Boundary testing and reinforcement history 
•  Why most handlers accidentally raise expectations too quickly 
•  How to reset training without starting over 
•  Practical strategies for rebuilding consistency and reliability 

If your once-sweet puppy has entered their chaotic teenage phase, this episode will help you understand what’s normal, what’s not, and how to get through it without losing progress — or your sanity.

Transcript

Why Teen Puppies Regress

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Today's episode is all about the adolescent puppy phase, the stage where so many people feel blindsided because their previously trained puppy suddenly starts ignoring cues, pushing boundaries, and acting, well, completely different. So let's talk about the six to eighteen month teenager period, why regression happens, why it's actually normal development, and how to adjust your expectations so that you can actually enjoy this phase of life with your dog. Welcome to the puppy training podcast, the show designed to help you raise a confident, well-behaved puppy using positive practical training methods. Each week we'll explore real-life training strategies, break down common puppy challenges, and give you clear step-by-step guidance you can start using right away. Whether you're dealing with potty training, biting, jumping, or just want to build a stronger bond with your pup as their handler, you're in the right place. Welcome back to the show, you guys. I'm glad you're here. Today we're talking teenagers. Some people are scared of that word. It sounds scary, it sounds hard, but really, honestly, teenagers are some of my most favorite beings. Whether it's human teenagers or dog teenagers, it's not that bad. So there are a few signs that your dog has entered this phase of life. If your dog's somewhere between six to eighteen months old and suddenly they're ignoring cues, they lose focus, they're stealing socks, they're jumping all over guests. I know some of you have had that issue from the beginning, but maybe this is just a new behavior. Or they're countersurfing because they're finally big enough to reach that table, or they're pulling on leash like crazy and acting like, well, training never really happened. You are not failing. You are just in a new phase of life with your dog. You're in teenagehood. And today we're going to talk about what that regression actually is, why it's happening, and why so many people accidentally make it worse. So let's get

What Changes During Adolescence

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into this. Now, one of the biggest misconceptions I think in puppy training is this idea that training ends around six months, right? We spend all of this time in the early months working on potty training and crate training and socialization and basic obedience. Maybe we take a puppy class or two, and then around six months we think, great, we did it. But biologically, your dog is just entering adolescence. And this is the equivalent, think middle school meeting hormones, meeting selective hearing. Okay. So the brain is changing, that your dog's body is changing, their emotions are changing, confidence changes, impulse control changes. And the really important part is your puppy is no longer automatically dependent on you. So young puppies naturally stay close, they naturally check in, they naturally follow. But teenage dogs, they start to experiment with independence, which means there's going to be some environmental distractions suddenly, those become more valuable to your dog, your cues become negotiable and boundary testing begins. This is not because your dog is dominant, it's not because they're stubborn, and it's not because they hate you. I promise. It's just because development is happening exactly the way it's supposed to. Now, every dog is different. So adolescence is also going to look different depending on your dog, but there are some very common patterns. So, some common patterns that we might see would be yesterday your dog knew down, and today apparently not, right? We see increased distractability. So leaves become fascinating. Dogs across the street become something your dog can't resist. A plastic bag becomes the most important thing in existence. And you're going to see some pushy behavior. They're going to test some new behavior, like the jumping, maybe their demand barking, maybe they try mouthing, maybe they try stealing items for attention. Some leash issues might return because of all of this that's happening. So pulling might resurface or reactivity suddenly appears. This is when we see reactivity mostly. It's about seven months old. Um, they're suddenly barking at triggers, or their frustration is increasing because they can't get to something that they want to get to when they're on leash. You might also see some selective listening. So this is really the hallmark teenage puppy move. This is when they absolutely understand the cue, they're just deciding whether compliance is worth it. And honestly, that's just a training information problem. It's not a personality flaw with your

The Expectation Trap For Handlers

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dog. So here's why we get so frustrated, and here's what I call an emotional trap. When a 12-week-old puppy struggles, people are patient because they expect a 12-week-old puppy to struggle. But when an eight-month-old dog struggles, we think they should know better, right? How often do you say that to yourself? Like, I know they know better. My dog knows better. That expectation shift changes handler behavior dramatically. So we become less consistent, we're more emotional, I'm more reactive, I'm often harsher, right? Not because I'm a bad person, but because regression feels personal. I must have done something wrong, right? I failed my dog. I did, I didn't do what I was supposed to do, even though I thought I was doing great. And we start to think, well, goodness, like, was all that training pointless? Did I ruin my dog? Uh why are they ignoring me? Why don't they just listen? But adolescent regression is not evidence that training failed. It's just evidence that training now needs generalization. It needs reinforcement, it needs some maturity. And those are different things. So early puppyhood is skill introduction. It's where we teach them new behavior. Adolescence is where we proof those behaviors under real life pressure with real life distractions going on, right? And adult reliability comes later. It's coming, I promise. This is just a phase that we're going to work through. So let's talk about boundary testing because people misunderstand this quite frequently. So boundary testing does not mean that your dog is trying to be in charge of you. It simply means your dog is learning what consistently works. Dogs learn in patterns and they're just trying to figure that out. That's it. Dogs repeat reinforced behavior. If it works for them, they keep doing it. If jumping sometimes earns attention, jumping continues. If ignoring recall or cum sometimes leads to freedom, guess what? Ignoring recall becomes super great. If countersurfing occasionally produces a piece of pizza, congratulations, you have accidentally built a professional countersurfer. So adolescent dogs are behavioral economists. They're just constantly calculating what pays off, what works for me. And if it works for me, I'm going to do it again. And if it doesn't work for me, I'll try something different. So during this stage, inconsistency becomes extremely visible. It's very obvious to us. And this is why behaviors that seemed fixed are suddenly coming back or reappearing. Not because your dog forgot, but because reinforcement history has shifted. So here's the mindset shift that helps almost every frustrated person stop treating your teenage dog like a trained adult. We want to start treating them like a puppy with some experience. Just that little distinction can really help us not be frustrated. Because if I'm assuming adult level reliability too early, then I give freedom that my dog hasn't actually earned developmentally. And this is where training can fall apart. So people, they take away the management, right? With a young puppy, we have a lot of management, we have a lot of structure, a lot of supervision, a lot of reinforcement or pain, pain, pain, pain, right? And good sleep routines right when our dog still needs them. So we don't want to get rid of those too early. We do want to start to change how they happen, but we don't want to get rid of them. So we need to reset

Reset Plan: Manage, Pay, Simplify

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expectations very strategically. So here's a practical reset plan if you're struggling with this. Number one, I want you to bring back some management. If your dog is making bad choices repeatedly, they likely have too much freedom. And it's easy to get there about four months four or five and six because house training is going so great. So we give them more freedom. But as we give them more freedom, they might make some choices that we don't love. So we need to bring back maybe a tether or a baby gate or crate time, pens, right? Don't get rid of all of those too soon because management is not punishment. Management is preventing rehearsal of habits or patterns that we don't want our dog to create. Okay. So rehearsal is going to build habits that we don't want. We want to create habits that we like. So number two would be to reinforce behaviors again. So if you've stopped paying your dog, you've kind of taken away that I pay every time, that's okay. We start to work out, okay, I pay once in a while. That's intermittent reinforcement, which is great, but we still have reinforcement. Don't get rid of paying altogether. If I, my teenager went to McDonald's and they got trained to do a job and I paid them for training, and then as soon as their two weeks of training was done and I said, okay, show up to work the next day, but I'm not going to pay you, they wouldn't come back to work, right? So similarly, your dog, if you just stop paying them all of a sudden, you're going to see our regression and behavior. So we do need to keep paying them, but we can change what we're rewarding them with. So, and we can do it intermittently as as well. So the rate at which we're paying them can change. But we want to keep using food rewards. If they have a favorite toy or if they love to be praised, some dogs just want to hear that they're a good dog. We give them attention, we're playing with them, we're giving access to outside environment that they love. We're going to teach them that listening is worth it, especially when there's distractions going on. We don't want to get rid of all the reinforcement, okay? Number three would be lower the difficulty. So if our dog keeps failing, we want to take a step back, set them up for success. Distance, you guys, is your friend. That's probably the most common thing I say to people with dogs in teenagehood. Distance is your friend, okay? Uh duration is also your friend, and simplification is your friend. So instead of come away from 14 dogs at the park, let's just try come away from one distraction from a manageable distance. Okay. And then we build that to be stronger and stronger over time with success. As successes happen, you guys, your dogs will want to keep working for you and with you because they're seeing they are getting rewards, right? Things are happening that are good and they will keep repeating that. Okay, number four would be to prioritize relationship over control. It's really easy to just want to panic and become correction heavy, but I want you to be careful with that. So in this phase, we want to make sure that we are we have clarity, consistency, that we're giving reinforcement and structure, and that we're not trying to win, that we're actually trying to help our dog. It's about the dog being successful. So we're trying to teach them. Okay, we also want to make sure that we expect some inconsistency. So progress during adolescence is not going to be a straight line, right? We're going to have really good days and we're going to have some really bad days, and we're going to have some great breakthroughs, and then we're going to see some really weird regressions, maybe. Don't get frustrated. This does not mean that you're doing it wrong or that training is broken. It just means that development is happening. We're working our way through teenage

Social Media Myths And When To Get Help

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hood. Okay, let's just talk about social media for a second because comparison is going to destroy people during this phase. I know you're going to see videos of, you know, my six-month-old puppy is walking perfectly off leash with other dogs, or they're doing a perfect heel, or they are flawless in public. They are so perfect in public and they have perfect behavior. And meanwhile, your adolescent lab just stole an entire pizza off the counter. So listen up. Dogs on social media are just snapshots. You're seeing one picture of one moment that is working well for that dog. So you're not seeing the behind the scenes, you're not seeing the in and outs of everyday life. So many reliable adult dogs were absolute disasters in adolescence. And that's just the reality. Okay. Professional trainers know this, experienced handlers know this, but new puppy handlers often don't. They have these really, really high expectations and then they get themselves really frustrated because their puppy's not acting like these little uh glimpses that you're getting on social media. So be careful with comparison on social media. Now, when should we worry? Should we worry? I don't know. So normal regression does exist, but there are times that I do want you to reach out if you need help. So if you are seeing any sorts of escalating aggression, uh severe fear, there are fear periods your adolescent is going to go through, and that's normal. But if it lasts longer than say a week or two, yeah, definitely we want to check that out. If you're seeing your dog panic, if they have reactivity issues that are cropping up, meaning they're pulling and lunging and barking on leash at triggers. If you're seeing any sort of resource guarding or behaviors that feel unsafe, that's a really good time to reach out to a professional trainer. We have an entire course online if you're interested in our program. We can help you with all of these behaviors. We talk to you one-on-one. You can come to group calls, you can come to live classes and courses, you can email us your questions. Like we really want to help you be successful through this phase of life. So if you're seeing some of those more elevated signs, please reach out and get help, whatever that looks like for you and wherever you want to find that help. But please get help. Okay, now here's

Consistency Builds A Reliable Adult Dog

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the encouraging part. If you stay consistent through adolescence, this is where dogs truly become dependable. Not because they obey like robots, because no dog is perfect and they never will be, but because we've had enough repetition that we've built some fluency, we've reinforced uh good behavior, so we've built some really good habits. And our dogs are starting to mature, which means they have more patience, they have more impulse control, and our communication is clearer. So dogs that come out strongest on the other side are usually not the dogs that never struggled. Okay. So if your dog's struggling being a teenager, that's okay. Uh, they're the dogs whose handlers just stayed consistent during the struggle and they didn't give up. All right, you guys, thanks for listening today. I hope that a few of those tips helped you out. Maybe just gave you a little breath of fresh air so you can relax and you can enjoy this phase of life. Teenagers really are fun. They're kind of just uh spunky, they have energy, they're creative, um, they're trying to figure out life, and we get to enjoy that journey with them. We get to kind of coach them along and watch them mature, and it's a beautiful thing. Have a great rest of your week. Happy training. Thanks for tuning in today. If you found this episode helpful, be sure to subscribe so you never miss a training tip. And if you're enjoying the show, leaving a quick review really helps other handlers find us. For more training resources, tips, and support, visit me Amy Jensen at baxterambella.com. Until next time, happy training.