need assurance-13 month old going to chill out eventually?!?

[imtheman23]

@larsonmcl Hmm. You have a poodle mixed with a golden retriever. Wonder why it’s hyper.
Lol jk

It’s hyper cause you have a mixed dog comprised of two high energy WORKING breeds. This dog needs a job and tons of mental stimulation and exercise.
I don’t know why people don’t realize this about doodles.

 

[kimrossie]

@imtheman23 In all fairness I do think this can vary dog to dog. My friends have a 1 yr old goldendoodle that is active but also can chill and be quite lazy.

I have a working dog mix (she's a mix of seven insane working breeds, including border collie, ACD, German Shepherd, etc. There are no non-working dogs in her makeup) and while she loves to run around and play she can sit still for hours at a time. She just got spayed and I was worried she would lose her mind but while she is obviously bored and anxious she's doing fine just laying around with a few daily walks.

OP is describing something on the high end of active.

OP, One thing I did with my puppy is to reward calm as soon as I brought her home at 8 weeks. Literally the next day I started working on acclimating her to my schedule, so that she would chill starting at around 8am while I took work calls. I do wonder if that made a difference, starting so young.

 

[larsonmcl]

@imtheman23 I fully realize this, knew it going in, and am (mostly) okay with it! I just would like for her to be able to have SOME down time throughout the day. I definitely thought she'd be able to take at least one nap outside of her crate during the day. We have not made it to that point yet...and that's what I'm hoping people can tell me will eventually happen! We do a lot of mental stimulation and physical exercise, I promise!

 

[alwyn]

@larsonmcl We had the same with our border collie. He calmed down a little bit when we started to put a leash on him inside and not allow him to do anything (and calm yourself while holding the line). We also saw mayor improvement when we started giving him his food only when he is in either a sleeping or very calm state.

 

[larsonmcl]

@alwyn oh that's such a good idea! I'm going to try feeding her when she's being calmer.

 

[ninjatoth]

@larsonmcl Apologies if this is an obvious question or if you've tried this already, but does your puppy have a lot of opportunities to be bored?

I have a standard poodle pup who only very recently (past 4 weeks or so) has learned to calm down outside of his crate and expen. It takes him a little while, and it doesn't ALWAYS happen (if it's his witching hour, all bets are off), but if we are just sitting on the couch or eating dinner, after a while he'll be like "oh okay I guess no one wants to play with me" and will go lie down somewhere. If he starts running around like a maniac, we put him in his pen, which he immediately takes as his cue to lie down and either stare at us creepily or take a nap.

I attribute this to a combination of relaxation protocol (which I see you're doing!) and just... ignoring him. Often. We started with teaching him to love his pen, then learning to be bored in the pen, and now learning to be bored outside the pen.

 

[larsonmcl]

@ninjatoth In my mind I think she's always bored! But in reality, I probably am always giving her something to do in order to keep her occupied or stop her from searching for something (bad) to do on her own. I should probably ignore her more now that I'm thinking about it the way that you put it!

 

[blessthefall]

@larsonmcl I’m think similarly to r/cinnamon_giraffe in that my dog who’s a dachshund so very different breed did have to learn to be bored and when I say sorry I need to work I’ll be at my desk not interacting. Mine had to learn everyday won’t be a n adventure some will be sofa days or overwhelmed with pain days where we nap a LOT

 

[coelohim]

@larsonmcl Y

 

[imagebeastmarkbeast]

@larsonmcl doggy daycare tires the HECK out of dogs, trust me i work at one. but that’s what golden doodles are like. she will hopefully calm down throughout the year. just exhaust that puppy.

 

[etgohome]

@larsonmcl My dog was exactly like this at this! He did finally mellow out, somewhere around 16 months old. In the meantime I would suggest doing place training, and keep up with the crate training. There’s nothing wrong with crating your dog so that she will take a nap. Another thing that helped my dog too, was actually teaching him the command to cuddle. Which was basically just teaching him to lay down next to me with his head resting on my body. I would treat him a lot at first and now I don’t need to treat him for him to cuddle with me.

 

[isaacs2311]

@larsonmcl So, this might sound counter intuitive, but my dog (mostly not a puppy anymore, she's 2 now) gets MORE hyper when she needs sleep. It's like she's stuck in GO GO GO mode. She'll rush to the door when we go out and sit down on her mat (what she does before she can go out the door) or she'll try to sneak into the car. She'll sit next to her harness and flirt pole. If we go out the door without her she will sit on her mat and cry. She cries if locked in her crate or left behind a door. She stops sniffing on walks and pulls more.

She's usually very calm so it's very uncharacteristic of her. Her responsiveness also goes way down. She gets twitchy and can't focus. She gets hyper vigilant and is more of a hair trigger. Her appetite might go off.

It's very easy to give her even more activities and things to do but we do the opposite - ask her to go into her crate more often. She's never crated anymore except for this. We ask her to go to her crate, she runs in and we lock the door for an hour or two. After a few days she's back to her normal self again.