four month writeup on the adolescent regression with our eleven month old male golden retriever, what fell apart, what we tried, what actually worked, and what we wish wed known at month seven

Rye is our 11 month old male golden, intact still (well neuter at 18 months on the vets recommendation), 71lb, we got him at 9 weeks from a hobby breeder in vermont. we had a textbook puppyhood, he was a poster child for the first 6 months, recall was 95%+ in any environment, settled on his bed for hours, polite door manners, the whole package. then month 7 hit and i now understand what every dog person has been warning us about. im writing this up because when i went looking for adolescent regression writeups around month 7 i mostly found "it gets better hang in there" reassurance which is fine but isnt the same as someones actual playbook, so heres ours from month 7 through month 11.

what fell apart, in roughly the order it happened. week 1 of month 7 his recall in the off leash area dropped from 95% to maybe 60% over a single week, which felt like a flip had been switched. week 3 his on leash manners around other dogs went from "looks at them, looks at me, gets a treat, moves on" to lunging and frustration vocalizations that we had never seen before. month 8 the counter surfing started (which we had never had a single incident of in the first 7 months). month 8 to 9 his settle on his bed in the evening collapsed from 2 hours to 15 minutes before he was up looking for something to do. month 9 doorbell barking that built into a full alert pattern for any noise outside. throughout this whole stretch his food motivation stayed strong and his bond with us stayed solid, which kept us oriented, but if you had asked me at month 9 whether i was raising the same dog id raised through month 6 i would have said honestly no, this is a different animal and im not sure what to do with him.

what we tried and what worked. the thing that worked the most clearly and the most quickly was switching from training sessions back to training games, specifically the Susan Garrett style "its yer choice" and "crate games" framing where the structure of the activity is play rather than obedience. our previous model had been 3 short obedience sessions a day building duration on cues. that model collapsed at month 7 because the cues themselves were no longer the reinforcer for him, the relationship to the game was. we kept the same skills but rebuilt the framing around play, and within 3 weeks the recall came back to about 85% which we then maintained through month 11. second piece, we got serious about decompression walks, specifically 45-60 min sniff walks on a long line in low stimulation environments at least 4 days a week, replacing what had been higher arousal play and fetch. the counter surfing dropped 80% in the 2 weeks after we started this and we now think we had been chronically under-providing sniffing time for what his nose actually needs. third piece, we leaned hard on management for the things we werent ready to retrain, baby gates between rooms, a tether station in the living room for evenings when he was bouncing, the counter cleared and kept clear, the doorbell disconnected for 4 weeks while we worked on the doorbell pattern from the rebuild side. fourth and most important piece in retrospect, we stopped trying to "fix" the adolescent dog and started managing the adolescent dog, which is a different stance.

what we wish wed known at month 7. one, the regression is not a training failure, the regression is a neurological reorganization that you cannot prevent with better training and trying harder makes it worse. two, the dogs you compete with at the puppy class who looked like rockstars at month 6 are about to have the same wall hit them, and the dog who looked average at month 6 and the dog who looked like a star at month 6 often end up in the same place at month 14. three, the cues that "stop working" are not gone, they are temporarily inaccessible to a brain thats doing other things, and you preserve them by stopping the testing and resuming the play. four, if you are coming up on month 6 with a golden or any large breed dog and youre reading this, the months 7 to 14 stretch is the hardest and most consequential stretch of dog ownership and the families who come through it with the dog they wanted are the ones who shifted from "i am training my dog" to "we are getting through this together." happy to answer questions, especially if youre in the middle of the stretch right now and feeling like you broke something. you didnt break anything, you have an adolescent.