So Teddy's starting to kind of tip into the maturity now, is that what

you were saying? Into the, maybe Kevin the teenager kind of. Oh excellent, I can't wait. You know where Riekall goes, a little bit out the window. I don't know. His arms get a bit longer. He starts listening to music with his bedroom door closed, off all the lights, that kind of thing.

Hates his parents.

Hates his parents. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. God!

God, why are you doing that again? His bark gets deeper.

I can't wait. Shut up Scott, God!

I feel, I don't know, I feel at a moment anyway. He's a much calmer dog than when I got him. Yeah,

he's chilled and it's like, you know, we all react differently to adolescents, humans and dogs. So, hey, Touchwood, maybe you're one of the lucky ones.

Well, who knows. I feel that there might be a phase of teenager coming quite soon. It

may be, and the thing is, you know, a lot of the time when I'm speaking to owners that live with an adolescent dog, they think the dog has given them a hard time. But the dog is having a hard time. You know, it's tough that you've had a lesson even when you're a dog. So it's really about nursing them through that sort of six month periods. And then you're golden. So all of the training that you've done previous, it may feel like it's gone out the window. But just hold on, just get yourself through it, limit mistakes. And then when they come out the other ends you're in business So

what could

the

difference be that I'm going to experience between him being really little and and what could be about to happen? He's

testosterone will go through the roof. So he's testosterone. Well, he'll actually smell Six seven times more testosterone than five or six year old adult dog So it's kind of bursting through the roof. Don't picture that too much. But it's bursting through the roof at the moment of his testosterone. So that's going to make him much more curious to other dogs. Other male dogs are maybe going to tell him to reel his neck in a little bit more in the park. So he may be a bit more of a target for other dogs, certainly other entire dogs. So that may change a little bit. If you are meeting other dogs down the park, maybe find out if that other dog is entire. And just take that, not as a big red flag, but just be prepared to help Teddy out of a sticky situation if need be. Also, recall tends to go out the window as well when dogs hit adolescence. Remember when you told your mom you'd be home at 11? Nah, not when you're hitting adolescents. You might have every planned that you're gonna be home at 11, but there's different hormones, different drivers that are gonna keep you away from the family unit.

So do I have to reteach the recall? You

might have to just accept that it's gonna be not as good as it was when when the puppy is younger there's more insecurities there so they're more bothered about where you are in the environment. They're more bothered about where you are down the park. He's

basically becoming his own guy. His own man. Yeah.

Yeah. His own man and and drives behaviours. If you imagine back in a day you and me Scott we're living in our tribe, in our heart, and we hit adolescence, we're going to feel good about going further away from home. And that's really, really important because that enables us to then set up our own tribe, enables us to set up our own gene pool. And it's the same for dogs, so hanging around with owners down the park is less attractive to an adolescent dog than it is with a puppy.