Lucy is regressing - normal?

Yesterday I came home and she had peed on the floor and ripped up part of a rug. She has NEVER done anything like this. She is 100% potty trained, and has never ruined anything before. She is almost 11 months old. I have heard that at some point dogs regress to their "puppy ways" again. Is this true?

 

I wouldnt say they go back to their puppy ways but they can regress, usually through some kind of trauma, change in surroundings, routine, although things like thunderstorms, fireworks, quakes etc can trigger off an episode of behaviour that is not the norm, that is usually short lived though. Dont let her get away with it....that said, is she spayed yet? if not is she coming into heat? Another thing to rule out would be any kind of medical problem like a bladder infection....

 

Sometimes dogs at that age do start trying out some puppy things again. It's like they are testing you to see if you will stand by your rules. They seem to lose all of their training and you wonder what the heck has happened. It's just "doggy adolescence" and you get through it by going back to your puppy techniques. The good news is, they usually respond very quickly once you remind them that they aren't going to get away with stuff. Do NILIF (nothing in life is free) very strictly for a week or so and go back to your puppy housebreaking routine and it should help.

My dogs once ate a chair after being fine for months. I now fence off the furniture when we aren't home because there's no way to predict when they will do it again. I think they just got bored. And I can't leave out any really nice chew toys when I am gone because I don't want them to fight over them. I always assumed it was Nala, but it could have been Bonnie who may have had a touch of SA when we first got her, although nothing too terrible.

 

Yes she has been spayed since she was 4 months. I don't think she has a bladder infection because she just peed in the house 1 time. She did it when we were at work and hasn't done it since. But if she starts doing it more, I will take her to the vet.

We are starting another session of training classes in a few weeks. I will do the NILIF.

 

Let us know how it goes. If she's like my dogs, she will just occasionally do something out of the blue and you think "Where the heck did THAT come from??" and then they are fine again for months.

Someone once ate a bunch of the (wall-to-wall) carpet in our family room along with the phone cord. Then months later is when the chair got eaten. I decided to just remove temptation and fence it all off.

But Nala does tend to get squirrely if she doesn't get enough exercise. There was one week this summer when she didn't get to the park due to rain and agility was cancelled and after about 8 days in the house she suddenly got the zoomies one morning and dashed around willy nilly like she used to do as a puppy. We were all laughing at her, poor girl.

 

LOL Lucy does those zoomies sometimes. We call them "fraps". Now that I think of it, she doesn't do it near as much as she used to. She is growing up :cry:

 

It is shocking when you suddenly realize your puppy is gone and an adult has taken her place. Nala at 2 years old is changed in some ways. Just when I start to be sad, though, she shows me she is still the same crazy dog inside after all.