Adolescence is ruff on dogs too | Research led by Newcastle University shows typical teenage behavior does not just occur in young humans – It happens in dogs too

Harder to train

New Delhi, May 14^th, 2020: The study, headed by Dr Lucy Asher from Newcastle University, is the first to find evidence of adolescent behaviour in dogs.

The researchers found dogs were more likely to ignore commands given by their caregiver and were harder to train at the age of eight months, when they are going through puberty. This behaviour was more pronounced in dogs which had an insecure attachment to their owner.

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But Dr Asher, a Senior Lecturer in Precision Animal Science, in the University’s School of Natural and Environmental Sciences, warns adolescence can be a vulnerable time for dogs as many are taken to shelters for rehoming at this age.

“This is a very important time in a dog’s life,” she explains. “This is when dogs are often rehomed because they are no longer a cute little puppy and suddenly, their owners find they are more challenging and they can no longer control them or train them. But as with human teenage children, owners need to be aware that their dog is going through a phase and it will pass.”

Behaviour in adolescence

The team, which included Nottingham and Edinburgh universities, working with the charity Guide Dogs, looked at a group of 69 dogs to investigate behaviour in adolescence. They monitored obedience in the Labradors, Golden Retrievers and cross breeds of the two, at the ages of five months – before adolescence – and eight months- during adolescence.

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Dogs took longer to respond to the ‘sit’ command during adolescence, but only when the command was given by their caregiver, not a stranger. The odds of repeatedly not responding to the sit command from the caregiver were higher at eight months compared to five months. However, the response to the ‘sit’ command improved for a stranger between the five and eight month tests.

Further evidence was found when the team looked a larger group of 285 Labradors, Golden Retrievers and German Shepherds and cross breeds of them. Owners and a trainer less familiar with each dog filled in a questionnaire looking at ‘trainability’. It asked them to rate statements such as: ‘Refuses to obey commands, which in the past it was proven it has learned’ and ‘Responds immediately to the recall command when off lead’

Caregivers gave lower scores of ‘trainability’ to dogs around adolescence, compared to when they were aged five months or 12 months. However, again trainers reported an increase in a trainability between the ages of five and eight months.

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The experts also found that in common with humans, female dogs with insecure attachments to their caregivers (characterised by higher levels of attention seeking and anxiety when separated from them) were more likely to reach puberty early. This data provides the first evidence of cross-species impact of relationship quality on reproductive timing, highlighting another parallel with parent-child relationships.

A passing phase

Dr Naomi Harvey, co-author of the research from the University of Nottingham’s School of Veterinary Medicine and Science and the charity Dogs Trust, says that whilst the results of this study may not come as a surprise to many dog owners, it has important consequences.

“Many dog owners and professionals have long known or suspected that dog behaviour can become more difficult when they go through puberty” says Dr Harvey. “But until now there has been no empirical record of this. Our results show that the behaviour changes seen in dogs closely parallel that of parent-child relationships, as dog-owner conflict is specific to the dog’s primary caregiver and just as with human teenagers, this is a passing phase.”

“It’s very important that owners don’t punish their dogs for disobedience or start to pull away from them emotionally at this time” added Dr Asher. “This would be likely to make any problem behaviour worse, as it does in human teens”.

Teenage dogs? Evidence for adolescent-phase conflict behaviour and an association between attachment to humans and pubertal timing in the domestic dog is published in Biology Letters.

About Newcastle University:

Newcastle University, UK, is a thriving international community of some 27,750 students from over 130 countries worldwide.  As a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities in the UK, Newcastle has a world-class reputation for research excellence in the fields of medicine, science and engineering, social sciences and the humanities. The Research Excellence Framework 2014 (REF) placed Newcastle University 16th in the UK for Research Power and most of our research (78%) were assessed to be world-leading or internationally excellent. Newcastle University is honored with a Gold Award – in the Teaching Excellence Framework and is known for research-led teaching delivered by dedicated and passionate teachers (TEF).

Newcastle University is also ranked:

• 1st in the UK for Computing Science research impact, 3rd in the UK for Civil Engineering research power and 11th in the UK for Mathematical Sciences research.
• 3rd in the UK for English, and in the top 12 for Geography, Architecture and Planning, and Cultural and Media Studies research quality
• 4th amongst UK medical schools for Clinical Medicine research intensity

Newcastle University is also among the top 20 universities in the country with the employment rate of 94%.

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