Your teenage dog is pestering your old dog, and keeping them apart is your job rather than the old dog's

Your old dog is asleep. Your 11 month old dog lands on them, mouths at a back leg, and bows for a game. The old dog gets up and moves away, again.

You have probably been told the older dog will sort it out. That advice asks a stiff, tired dog to do a job you can do better with a baby gate.

What is actually happening

Your adolescent dog is not being cruel and is not making a bid for rank. They have a lot of energy, few outlets, and one available dog in the room.

Pestering pays every time. Even a grumble from the old dog is a response, and a response is more interesting than nothing.

The old dog is doing the same maths from the other side. Getting up and leaving works, so leaving is what they do, and they lose sleep every time.

Management first, this week

Behaviour change is built from management plus reinforcement, and with 2 dogs at opposite ends of life the management half carries most of the load.

1. 1

   Give the old dog a room the young dog cannot enter, with their bed, water and a closed door or a gate. Not a punishment space, and not shared.

2. 2

   Default to separated whenever you are not watching. Together is something you arrange on purpose, not the setting the house sits in.

3. 3

   Feed in different rooms, and hand out chews behind closed doors. Never leave a chew down where the young dog can go and take it.

4. 4

   Put the young dog behind a gate for the old dog's toilet trips and their walk out of the front door.

5. 5

   Give the old dog high-value quiet time daily, alone with you, on their bed. They are allowed to still have a life.

Give the adolescent somewhere for the energy to go

Nothing above works if your young dog has nothing else to do. The old dog is currently their main entertainment, so replace the entertainment.

1. 1

   Walk them separately, every day. The young dog gets 20 minutes of sniffing where the old dog does not have to keep up.

2. 2

   Feed 1 meal a day from a stuffed and frozen toy, in a different room from the old dog.

3. 3

   Give a daily chew that takes real work. Chewing brings a dog down in a way that running a young dog into the ground does not.

4. 4

   Build 2 or 3 known dog friends of a similar age, met on purpose outside the house. Play should happen with a dog who wants to play.

5. 5

   Practise settle on a mat in short repeatable sets, below the point where your dog cannot hold it. Relaxation is trained as a behaviour in its own right.

Teach the interruption, and pay the leaving alone

1. 1

   Watch for the run-up rather than the pounce: the stare, the stalk, the lowering front end. Call your dog at the stare.

2. 2

   Pay heavily every time your young dog walks past the old dog without touching them. That is the behaviour you actually want, and it usually goes unnoticed.

3. 3

   Move your dog with a house lead left on the harness rather than with your hands on their body.

4. 4

   Send your dog to their mat or their bed when it starts, and pay them there. Give the arousal a destination.

Reward-based methods are what the veterinary behaviour guidance recommends, and survey work associates them with higher reported responsiveness and fewer reported problem behaviours.

Watch the old dog closely

An older dog who has become snappy, withdrawn or reluctant to move may be sore rather than fed up. Pain frequently presents as a change in behaviour rather than as obvious lameness.

Book a veterinary examination for the old dog if anything about them has shifted, including sleep, appetite, hearing, sight or how they take the stairs. Sudden behaviour change warrants that appointment.

The honest part

These 2 dogs may never be friends, and they do not have to be. A house where both dogs are comfortable and separately looked after is a good outcome.

The adolescent half of this is temporary. The separation is not a life sentence, it is what this year looks like.

Today's version, in one line: a gate on the old dog's room tonight, and a separate 20 minute sniffing walk for the young one.