Teenage dogs, like teenage children, ignore their caregivers. By Virginia MorellWhen our Scottish collie puppy reached doggie adolescence, she suddenly stopped obeying my commands.
Previously, if I called “come,” Annie would fly across our yard to my arms. Now, the 8-month-old gave me a defiant “make me” look and ran the other way.Our dog trainer advised us to stop fretting. “She’s a teenager,” she said. “She’ll grow out of it.” Now, a new study is backing that up: Dogs, it says, experience a hypersensitive period at the onset of puberty that makes them act out, just like human teenagers.“There is abundant folk knowledge … that the behavior of adolescents differs from younger or older dogs,” says Barbara Smuts, a behavioral ecologist at the