It Takes Two Years!

I keep telling all my clients who are struggling with their adolescent dog – it takes two years for your dog to be two years old and there is no way to make things move any faster.  Trying to pressure your pup into doing things, only adds to everyone’s frustration.  Why is the two year point important?

Their brains aren’t fully developed until they are 18 months old and the part of the brain that deals with emotional control and impulse control is one of the last bits to fully form.  This is the bit of the brain that your dog needs to be able to deal with distractions and to be able to concentrate for long periods of time.

Their hormones are all over the place, more obviously day to day with the males but the females also can suffer from extreme hormone responses.  By the time they are two years old they are basically an adult, they still have a lot to learn but they are able to consolidate and become more consistent.

For those of you, who like me, are in the process of getting through those initial two years I want to encourage you to keep on keeping on.  Things will change and they will get better, don’t lose faith in the process.

Finan is now 15 months old and we have done our first training workshop together.  He has not been ready for this up until now and to be honest I wasn’t sure that he was going to cope in this one.  He was only there as I had planned to work my other dog and he was just along for the ride.  After working my older dog, I realised that it would be a safe place to see what he could do.  I brought him out with no expectations because it has only been in the last coupe of months that he has been able to focus on anything apart from scanning the skies for birds that could possibly be chased and barked at.

Up until about 5-6 months old he was working nicely with food rewards in an outdoor environment.  He was not interested in playing with me with any toys, and had no retrieve drive at all.  During this time, I was working hard to teach him that playing with me was fun.  At around 5-6 months his testosterone kicked in and his brain left the building completely.  From that time onwards until over a year old he was on a longline and harness to prevent him from learning that chasing birds and barking at them was a productive behaviour.  I spent this time only being able to go to a few specific places and working within about 200yrds of the car, rewarding good choices to check in and to choose to work with me on little bits of heelwork, sits; a bit of stop whistle, which randomly he thinks is hilarious, and so it worked really well (when his brain was functioning) from an early point during this period.

For SEVEN months I had to do the same thing repeatedly, over and over again, trying to stay positive and to celebrate any tiny step in the right direction and on the days when nothing seemed to be going right to keep telling myself that it would get better eventually.  I was beginning to lose hope and to wonder if it was ever going to change and then suddenly!!! he could cope.  What we had worked on before his brain left the building resurfaced and within about a week, he was safe to have off the longline and to start doing more things with him.  He still had the desire to chase birds but week by week we are making good progress.  Fewer chases and barking, he can see birds and choose not to interact with them and slowly he is starting to be able to self-manage better and better.

He is still very much a baby and still has a huge amount to learn, but at the workshop, he did some nice hunting, responded to all my whistles promptly, turn, stop, and recall.  He also did some nice memory retrieves and a blind right at the end.  He worked off lead through it all including turning away and walking to heel from the memory retrieves.  It’s not tidy yet but the foundations are finally starting to show through.

I have baggage that I carry with me from my GWP who I allowed to learn all the things that you don’t want a hunting dog to learn.  The environment is more valuable that humans, self employed hunting is the best thing in the world, and running and running is what you do when off lead.  I carried the trauma of living with that dog who didn’t have a reliable recall through into my training with my other dogs.

My first three working cockers had brilliant recalls from an early age and they all went out for a bit of experience on shoots before they were a year old because they were controllable around birds.   The reason that this was possible was because they all had a high retrieve drive which I had focused onto toys and they valued playing with me over chasing birds.

When Finan came along he had no interest in playing with me with toys and I had flash backs to my GWP at the same age.  The difference with Finan, is that I used a huge amount of management to prevent him learning that self-employed hunting was valuable, chasing bird was valuable etc.  I cut down the stimulation of the environment by only going to familiar places with him on a longline and I persisted in working with him with toys.  When finally, he engaged with me with toys, I could then use that to motivate him to want to hunt and retrieve and enjoy working with me in environments where previously he had been totally overstimulated and unable to focus.

I have done very little formal training of behaviours with him – he still doesn’t have down on cue yet, his stay is a bit dodgy unless he is watching me put stuff out to hunt or retrieve, he can only do very basic stuff on cue.  However, I have spent a huge amount of time on helping him to choose to engage with me in an outdoor environment.

He was so overstimulated by 20-30 mins of being outside that he needed a huge amount of down time sleeping and doing nothing inside for his brain to recover and maintain a healthy balance of all his brain chemistry.  I have also spent a lot of time teaching him to just ‘be’ rather than ‘doing’ all the time.  This meant that I didn’t do any real training with him inside either, apart from the basics of living together and rudimentary boundary work.

Social media is great to see stuff and get training ideas but when you are going through a tough time with your pup it can be hard not to start to compare your pup to the videos of others.  I am in contact with some of Finan’s littermates and so it was very hard to see their videos of lovely training events and comparing them with my struggles.

This is also why the two-year mark is so important because I am sure that by two years old Finan will be doing similarly to his siblings, its just that they all will mature at different rates.  All the handlers have different lifestyles and that will all impact on the pup’s journey.

So, to end I would like to encourage all of you who are currently struggling with a young dog.  Don’t worry, keep on doing what you need to do with your dog, and don’t compare them to others.  If you need professional help, seek it out, sometimes even just for the moral support.  I know I needed people to keep reminding me that it would get better.  I knew it in my head, but some days it was hard to see how it was going to get better.