From the moment you got your puppy till fully grown up you will encounter stages your dog is having different periods, difficult moments. Such I name the stages of a young dogs life. Such stages, periods, every young dog walks through, but it's very hard to get those periods and map them. Eventually when you map them it does depend on the individual dog when and in what level it will come out.
Fanfan is a very nice example at the very moment. A wonderful hard biting dog and loves to attack sleeve and suit. But suddenly he seems sensitive today and is more aware of stick and re-attacks of decoy and voice timbres. This is just another sensitive period a youngster as Fanfan has to run through. Critical because one very bad experience and he will remember that experience above all.
A puppy at age 16 weeks will run through a critical stage where the awareness of the world will come out. Especially intelligent puppies are sensitive for those stages.
A person I know told me her GSD dog in training for SAR suddenly jumped into such stage too. This dog is 16 months old.
Such stages of a dog life is normal but we people aren't always aware of them. Can you guys give examples of such stages of your own dog and how long it took you before you felt like: 'ah, it's over'.
((moments like Raven described about Raider his social behavior at a show I consider as such stage too, but yet a positive one.))
As you said, it can be hard to define a sensitive stage and to know when it came and when it passed. For bitches you also have the heat periods and it's hard to know when a young bitch is sensitive due to coming heat or something else.
My older bitch I remember very good when her behaviour changed.I got her when she was 9 months and had been living only in a kennel... She was doing fine when I got her, really good in obedience and agility. social and loved to play with other dogs. In the age of 1 1/2 years, her world turned upside down, she hated other dogs, didn't listen to me at all when training obedience and started to "mark" on people. At the age of 2 she calmed down and was a quite nice dog to have around again. But that six months were really hard, dont know how many times I cryied over what to do with the dog. :-/
Warga has been upsidedown quite a lot during her whole young life. Some months she's been really stable and wonderful to train and have around, some months she's not been listening to me, not being good in training, sensitive to sounds and seen "ghosts" everywhere. Now she's two and I hope she stabilises now.
Fanfan is a very nice example at the very moment. A wonderful hard biting dog and loves to attack sleeve and suit. But suddenly he seems sensitive today and is more aware of stick and re-attacks of decoy and voice timbres.
Fanfan passed this stage in his life with a new learned -trick-. Had to spent some good times with him to have him control this mental moment and some conflict training at the same time. Suddenly he saw the light and did choose to learn to deal with these mental forces he had to run through and took the best out of it. The good part of this stage for me was how I suddenly saw usage to teach Fanfan the 'watch' command. So actually...instead of waiting for him to figure out how to deal with this moment I looked for the opportunity to use it and taught him to deal with a new training at the same time. Where 'watch' training is something new, it had correlation with the sensitive moment of Fanfan.
((tomorrow I will post a movie showing this 'watch' command with my 14 years old nephew Ruben as helper. --visit 'dog uncle' isn't without risk ))
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some months she's not been listening to me, not being good in training, sensitive to sounds and seen "ghosts" everywhere.
Exactly these days I was talking about.
Still am working on the mapping of these stages of a dog life. Especially when they are young you see a lot of these moments. Most of the times handlers aren't aware of it.
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