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Message from Fieldwood
After the Honeymoon – the Next Twelve Years
by Deb Mickey, Fieldwood Instructor
When we get a puppy we are immediately in love. We love how cute they are, how cuddly they are, and we enjoy watching them discover the world. We don’t even mind cleaning up after them while they learn the rules of the house. We buy them new collars, leashes, fun toys, and we enroll them in a puppy kindergarten class. It’s a wonderful honeymoon and we’re in love.
Then the puppy ages and he becomes a little more independent and at about 8 months old hits those terrible months of being a canine teenager. Just like any teenager our dog acts like he doesn’t need us and feels he doesn’t need to listen to us. It takes us off guard. What happened to that cute puppy who adored me and followed me everywhere? When this happens Puppy K graduates quickly sign up for the next obedience class and those who have skipped puppy kindergarten quickly enroll in a basic obedience class. Just give us the basics, ma’am: walk politely on leash, stop jumping up on people, come when called – bring back that cute puppy! With patience and perseverance we do get through the TTTs (terrible teen times).
Finally! After that round of classes our puppy is now a mature dog and we’ve got all that training under our belts. Phew! Our dog is a loved, well behaved member of the family and everyone is happy. Our dog is TRAINED. Our job is done. Or is it?
Not really. Training our dog is just another term for living with our dog. Everyday we are teaching them something whether we mean to or not. It could be something as positive as sitting before being fed or as negative as disregarding our wishes because we are too busy and are ignoring the dog’s developing bad habits. Our dogs are changing every day.
Dogs go through various developmental stages during their lives. We’ve talked about the puppy & teen stages, but we also need to keep in mind that most dogs aren’t mature physically and mentally until they’re 2 years old.* We don’t often think about this and then wonder why a 10 month old puppy who weighs 70 pounds still acts like a puppy – it’s because he is a puppy! He may be big but both his body and mind are still developing. Between the ages of 2 to 9 years, dogs are in their prime, at the top of their physical and mental abilities. After 9 you may see changes crop up related to aging; a few more aches and pains, sleeping longer and deeper, or hearing and eyesight starting to fail.
But no matter their age, dogs retain the mindset relative to a 3-year-old child. And, like all 3 year olds, they need our monitoring, guidance, and instruction to remain a welcomed member of society and stay safe and healthy in this man-made world. They need constant reminders of what their formal training taught them. This is one area where “use or lose it” is very true.
And, it’s for a lifetime – the lifetime of your dog. Like our children, our dogs require years of our guidance and instruction. But while our children grow up and move on, our dogs are with us until the end – loyal, loving, still looking up to us for guidance, but as cuddly and as cute as when they were pups. Their training, like the love, never stops.
* Breeds and individual dogs age at different rates. The numbers represented in this article are generalizations but are close estimates for a mid-sized dog.
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