Surviving Your Puppy's Adolescence By Tehani Mosconi I was
curious to see how Webster would define adolescence, and found
"youthful, exuberant, immature, unsettled." That pretty much
says it all! I always take a deep breath before I announce to my
puppy classes that they shouldn't think their work is done just
because their puppy is five or six months old. Quite the
opposite: adolescence is a challenge, both for puppies and their
people, and the real work is just beginning. Like most animal
behaviorists, I consider the period from seven to 12 months as
being adolescence for most dogs. (The larger breeds mature
slower so their adolescence falls later.) As in humans,
adolescence is a bridge or transition between youth and
adulthood. Because all dogs have their own personality and
breed-specific traits, adolescence manifests somewhat
differently in each. Nonetheless, most dogs exhibit at least
some of these common adolescent traits: selective hearing;
refusal to do previously learned commands; reversion to puppy