Remember all the fun parts of being young and carefree? All your washing done for you, free rent, the school-day done and dusted by 3 pm? Yeah, those days are a distant memory. But do you also remember all the teenage angst; that rebellious phase you went through when you pierced your cartilage and listened to Lana Del Rey’s Born to Die on repeat?
Well, it turns out we aren’t the only mammals that experience puberty blues, with a new study finding that dogs also go through the same change in hormones.
The study also confirmed that dogs, just like teenagers, are more likely to become disobedient during their adolescent years.
But this isn’t all just fun and games, there is real scientific evidence here to back the claims and very thorough trials to support the evidence. The study is the first of its kind, published by Dr Lucy Asher and her team who specialise in Precision Animal Science at Newcastle University. Working with a team of all different breeds of pups, from German Shepards to Labradors, the researchers tested the dogs from five to nine months old on a range of different behaviours. This included their responsiveness when called off-leash and whether or not they sat when instructed to.
The researchers concluded that these good boys and girls were hardest to train at eight months of age – the same time they are going through puberty:
“They are nearly twice as likely to ignore the “sit” command when they are eight months as compared to when they are five months.”
But the similarities don’t end there – the pups were also more likely to engage in destructive behaviour to get the attention of their owner if they felt insecure or threatened throughout this time. So maybe we aren’t so different from our furry companions after all.
Try to keep that in mind the next time your pooch destroys your favourite pair of shoes.
