I’m going to write a lot because today especially I’m at my wits end and I just need some advice or support. We adopted our dog, Pippin, in November 2021 from a Humane Society branch in a rural area in our state, they told us basically every dog there is brought in by animal control so they have no prior knowledge or history for them.

Age: they told us that he was around 7 months old. He hasn’t grown much more since we got him, mostly just filled out so I imagine that was a pretty good guess for his age. So that would make him about 17 months old or 1.5 years.

Breed/Size: Humane society said he is a border collie mix so we are not sure. Best guess is predominantly ACD and border collie or Aussie

new behaviors in the last month or so that I have written off as adolescence…

1. Stopped squatting to pee for the most part and has been marking more and more whereas previously he would go more or less all at once as soon as we stepped outside. Now he never does.

2. Intense demand whining out of nowhere, we did a lot of training on calming with a private trainer and he got to the point where he was good as long as we stuck to our routine. We do three 20 min walks per day and run him a few times a week around the neighborhood now that he’s olde. We don’t have a yard but a big apartment with plenty of space to play and do training exercises. Seems like it’s not enough anymore.

3. All of a sudden becoming pickier and pickier with food. At first we could get him to eat kibble eventually adding a bit of egg or pumpkin. But now he doesn’t even care about that. He will let his breakfast sit all day long, he would always eat right away before. We still give high value treats for training bc not sure what to do as an alternative.

4. He is overall so much more reactive. Good days and bad days with this. Bad days have gotten worse even though we are doing training much more consistently. He tries to jump on anyone within 10 ft. He lays down on the ground for a dog or squirrel a block away, sometimes in the middle of the street. We live in a very urban neighborhood and there are people and dogs around always. Spiraling right now feeling like we should move far out of the city or he won’t be able to improve bc the threshold will always be too high. He is weirdly not fearful or aggressive towards strangers, he crouches down and/or jumps with his ears back to initiate play. It is still, of course, unacceptable behavior because of countless reasons. So I keep him away from strangers and other dogs as much as I can, and he has never made an attempt to nip/mouth or vocalize at strangers and other dogs but it’s very hard where we live. Occasionally I will let him say hi if someone asks permission and if he can successfully respond to a command that shows he is listening to me, but I keep it simple “sit”, “lay”, “look”, because even those have a pretty iffy success rate despite lots of practice.

5. At first he was just noticing the TV more but now (in the last two weeks) when we play any video game especially he acts super anxious, pacing and whining. He will tuck his ears back and quietly growl and bark intermittently. He typically never barks unless there’s something that seems threatening (someone screaming outside, dogs being very loud outside, objects or people moving strangely in the dark outside) and then it’ll just be once or twice. The last few months though he will seem fixated on something and bark at the window but I look and there’s nothing there.

We have been much more diligent on positive reinforcement training recently. We did 6 sessions of private training with a balanced trainer but I had trouble with some of the methods she showed us….especially outside because she had us use a slip lead and there were diminishing returns and I just felt like it wasn’t a safe method for him. We have been doing a 4 week group training course that is all positive reinforcement and I feel much better about it and it is rewarding to see him show any improvement with distractions. But it definitely feels like he struggles much more than the other dogs. We are burning through training treats, marking any sort of small movements to refocus during exercises and rewarding each time. We have to use really high value treats which it seems like he even barely cares about 1/2 the time as opposed to trying to get at the other dogs once he hears them (class has all dogs separated into gated pens with sheets between). He won’t take treats as a lure for squirrels even on good days. I work full time from home and my job is really demanding since I have to meet billable hours goals and pippin takes a big toll on my work life balance. My partner works from home 2-3 times a week with a lot more Downtime.