Understanding behaviour, emotional regulation, and building skills for life.
Adolescence is one of the most challenging stages of dog ownership – not because your dog is being difficult, but because they are changing. During this phase, brain development, hormones, and emotional responses all shift at once, which is why behaviour can suddenly feel inconsistent, reactive, or harder to manage.
This course helps you make sense of those changes and shows you how to support your dog through them. More importantly, it helps you understand the key skills your dog needs to learn during this stage – the ones that will stay with them for life. You’ll learn how to create structure that supports emotional regulation, how to reduce over-arousal without shutting your dog down, and how to build confidence and thinking skills that carry into real life.
Rather than focusing on quick fixes or correcting behaviour, the emphasis is on developing the underlying abilities your dog will rely on long term – from everyday situations at home to more challenging environments outside. The goal isn’t just to get through adolescence, but to use it as a stage where you actively shape the adult dog your puppy will become. The result is a dog who can think more clearly, recover more quickly, and make better choices, even when things feel exciting or overwhelming.