I was chatting on the phone the other day, catching up with a friend of mine while she completed a long car journey. (No worries, she was on a headset.) She pulled into her garage and as she stepped from the car she reported to me that she heard a strange bang in the house. It was odd, as her children were both at school and her husband at work, but she wasn’t too concerned. As she entered her home, however, she gasped, “Kel, the house is ransacked. We’ve been robbed!”
I stayed on the phone with her while she assessed the damage in the family room. Toys and pillows were strewn everywhere. The paper drawings that the kids had made and left in a pile on the dining room table had been torn to shreds and were all over the place. Chairs were pulled out and knocked over. Even the paper decorations made by the children that had been hanging from the dining table light fixture were gone. And there was glue stick everywhere.
Soon my friend began to realize that all the valuables were still there: computer, TV, etc. It was then that the lightbulb went on – the culprit was not a burglar, but rather Homer, the family’s eight-month-old Labrador Retriever. (Names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent.)
Homer was at that moment safely tucked away behind his pet gate and lounging in the kitchen. Moments later, however, he could not contain his joy at having his “mum” home any longer and deftly jiggled the bottom of the gate with his paw until it opened and he burst into the room.
So, I thought, she has not only a one-dog demolition team on her hands, but an escape artist as well! Okay, it’s official, Homer is in adolescence.
Oh the signs had been coming. Her formerly goody-two-shoes pup who always came when called had been starting to ignore her requests for him to “Come!” There had also been some counter surfing incidents in recent weeks, not to mention the loss of a remote control or two and a magic marker fiasco.
My friend has been a stellar dog owner from the beginning. She’s followed all my advice, taken several training classes, and even actually practices the lessons with Homer regularly. Still, Homer is not perfect. That’s because he’s a dog and not a machine. He’s got curiosities, impulses, desires, and free will. And as he grows and develops he’s changing. Remember, behavior is always in motion, it’s never stagnant. As dogs move from puppyhood to adolescence they generally gain confidence (if you’ve done your early socialization right), and the temptations of the wider world call to them like a siren song. So while you may have laid a solid foundation in training and house manners, you can’t practice working with worldly distractions until your growing pup finds them distracting.
So, what to do with a teenage Homer in the house? My friend’s mother suggested she crate Homer more. In her eyes he had clearly shown that he was not yet mature enough to be left unattended, even in the puppy-proofed kitchen.
My friend, however, took a decidedly different stance. Her first thought was that Homer obviously needed more stimulation. “I know he’s just bored,” she told me. “I’m doing the best I can to stuff his meals in chew toys every day and get him out for exercise and training practice regularly, but it’s deep winter here and I’m sure he’s not getting enough exercise.”
She worried that if Homer were locked in the crate more often it would actually make the problem worse when he was let out. She also “got it” that while being in the crate stopped Homer from making messes, it didn’t teach him what to do instead.
I’ve never been so proud. Hooray, she had been listening to me all along!
She understood that Homer needed less confinement and more outlets. He was simply looking for more ways to express his doggy inclinations. Behavior is communication and Homer was sending a clear message that he was bored and unclear about how to behave when left to his own devices.
I recommended a few dry-kibble food-dispensing puzzle toys that deliver very slowly and really make the dog work for his meal, such as the Kong Wobbler and the Buster Cube. I also recommended that they start some simple scent work games as an easy indoor activity that would give Homer something engaging to do without requiring his human companion to put on five layers and stand in frigid temperatures for hours on end. Finally, I recommended that she choose a specific scent to use for marking the dog’s toys to help differentiate them from toys that belonged to her young boys.
True to form, my friend went out that very day and bought some dog puzzles and scent. I’m happy to report that within days, thanks to his super dedicated caregiver, Homer was back to being a “good” dog.
Kelly Gorman Dunbar is Director of the Center for Applied Animal Behavior, where she recruits and trains the instructors for the Dunbar family business, SIRIUS® Puppy & Dog Training. She is the creator of the SIRIUS Sniffers scent-detection program, and is in the process of bringing the French sport of cavage (truffle hunting) to the US. Kelly is also Founder and President of Open Paw and consults on various matters.
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