You’ve come home after another long walk with your teenage dog hoping this time you’ve finally tired them out enough that they’ll sleep. But instead they seem even more hyper than they did before the walk and instead of relaxing they’re doing laps of the house and literally bouncing off the walls. They might not be tired but you are - you’re exhausted from walking your dog for longer and longer every day and spending hours chucking balls for them to fetch.

So you didn’t do much training with your dog when they were a puppy…? Maybe you had no problems with your puppy’s behaviour. Maybe you didn’t have enough time to dedicate to your puppy’s training. Maybe you wanted to get the support of a trainer but didn’t have the money. Or maybe you just kept meaning to get around to it and you just kept putting it off. Whatever happened, you got through your dog’s puppyhood and it was kinda going ok…

One of the first questions many people ask when they start training their dog is ‘when can I stop using treats?’. And I completely understand why. A lot of people have concerns about the cost of constantly buying dog treats, whether their dog will become overweight and the impracticality of always carrying treats. We’re also all told by society that dogs should respond to trained cues ‘just because they’re told’ without expecting rewards.

‘FENTON, FENTON. JESUS CHRIST, FENTON…’ We’ve all seen the video of the labrador chasing deer while his human desperately tries to call him back. But what we’re all not super keen to admit is that we’ve all had our own Fenton moments. Luckily most people’s don’t involve a massive herd of deer (and aren’t recorded on camera for our eternal embarrassment). But we’ve been Fenton’s human, panicking because our dogs are completely ignoring us while running towards people, dogs, wildlife, livestock, traffic…

No dog is perfect. We all have things we wish our dogs would stop doing. Your dog might be pulling on-lead, not coming back when you call or jumping up at visitors. Or maybe they’re stealing and destroying your stuff, digging at your carpet or eating things they shouldn’t. You could just punish your dog to try and stop the problem behaviour. But that’s going to affect your dog’s welfare and damage your relationship with them. And it’s not going to deal with the root cause of the behaviour so it’s unlikely to work long term.

You worked so hard training your puppy all the skills they need to be your perfect dog. And now they’re not a puppy, you’re ready to enjoy your awesome adult dog. But as they’ve got older, their training has gone backwards. Some days it even feels like you’ve done no training at all… The problem is they’re not an awesome adult dog yet, they’re a tearaway teen.

You're starting to feel like your puppy is becoming the perfect dog of your dreams. But then, suddenly everything changes. Your puppy stops listening to you and fucks off to the other side of the park as soon as you let them off lead, they're now barking at every person and dog they see and they're biting you again (but now it's scary because they're BIGGER). You might be feeling like you've failed or you're just not good enough to have a puppy. But that's not true - what you're experiencing is normal. Your puppy's just become a teenager.