You get up, they get up. You go to the bathroom, they come. You move to the kitchen and there are 4 feet behind you before you have got there. Owners call this the velcro stage.
Why this shows up now
Dogs are a social species, and yours is at the age where you are the most reliable thing in the house. Following you is cheap, it sometimes pays in food or a walk, and it has never had a consequence.
Adolescence adds two things. Your dog is often short of sleep, and a tired dog trails around rather than settling. Their world is also changing week to week, so the familiar person becomes the thing worth tracking.
On its own, a dog who follows you is not a welfare problem and not something you have caused by being too soft. It is worth watching, not worth panicking about.
The line that matters
Ask one question. Can your dog lie down and stay lying down when you leave the room? Or does every exit produce whining, pacing, scratching at the door and a dog who cannot rest?
Following you around while otherwise relaxed is company. Distress the moment a door closes between you is separation-related behaviour, and that is a different piece of work. If that is what you are seeing, treat it as separation-related behaviour rather than clinginess, and start there.
Safety note
Book a veterinary examination if the clinginess is new, sudden, or came with any change in appetite, toileting, sleep or how your dog moves. Sudden behaviour change warrants a veterinary examination, and pain frequently presents as a change in behaviour rather than as obvious lameness. Get help now if your dog panics, injures themselves, or cannot be left for even 1 minute. That needs a veterinarian and a qualified behaviour professional.
Build a place to be that is not your heel
Relaxation is trained as a behaviour in its own right, in short repeatable sets below the point where your dog gets restless. A dog with a good station has an alternative to following you, which telling them off never gives them.
Put a mat in the room you are in most, 6 to 8 feet from where you sit. Not in another room, and not out of sight.
Pay your dog for lying on it. Drop food between their paws every 20 seconds at first, then every minute, then only now and again.
Give the mat a job it does every day. A chew after the evening walk, or a food toy while you cook, so lying there has a routine.
Do 3 minutes twice a day. Stop while your dog is still lying down rather than once they have got bored and left.
Then make small absences ordinary
Gradual, sub-threshold departure practice is the core of separation-related behaviour work, and it is also how you take the drama out of everyday room changes.
Walk to the doorway and come back, while your dog is on the mat with a chew. Say nothing on the way out or the way in.
Build from 2 seconds out of sight to 30, in uneven steps, so your dog cannot predict how long it will be.
Use a gate rather than a closed door at first, so your dog can see the room they are not in.
Go back to shorter absences on any day your dog gets up and follows twice. Shorter is not a step backwards; it is the size that works today.
Two things not to do
Do not shut your dog out of the room to break the habit. A closed door on a dog who is already unsure usually buys you scratching, not independence.
Do not scold the following. Punishment-based approaches are associated with fear and avoidance, and the thing your dog would be learning to avoid is you.
Rest is doing a lot of the work here. Check how much sleep your dog is actually getting across the day before you decide this is a behaviour problem at all.
Most of this eases as the stage does, though we cannot tell you a week it will happen in. Behaviour change is built from management plus reinforcement, and a mat with a chew on it is both.
Today's version, in one line: put a mat 6 feet from your chair tonight, and pay your dog for lying on it for 3 minutes.