Q&A on teenage dogs: Brain development, behavior, training strategies, and client guidance - DVM 360

Skyler: Welcome, welcome, welcome to Frosty the Dog — the show that celebrates everything wonderful, surprising, and downright magical about dogs. I'm your host, Skyler, and I am so glad you're here today. This show is named for Frosty — the best boy, the most spectacular dog, my heart — and every single episode is a little love letter to him and to every dog who has ever made a human's life better just by existing. Frosty, this one's for you, buddy. Skyler: Before we dive in, a huge thank you to our sponsors. First and always, our primary sponsor and namesake, Frosty — the best boy in the whole world. We are also brought to you by Ada, a company that helps clients integrate A I into their workflows in smart, practical ways — love that for everyone. By Ago Consulting — that's "Ahh-Go" — silicon development consulting covering everything from A I to SoC. And by Zen Semiconductor, an umbrella company with a whole portfolio of businesses across the silicon industry. Amazing humans, all of them. Okay — now. Today on the show we've got teenage dogs going through their rebellious phase — and yes, that is a real scientific thing. We've got a therapy dog duo who have been bringing comfort to hospital patients for ten whole years. And we are going to talk about what it feels like to BE a therapy dog — because researchers are finally asking that question, and I love them for it. Let's go. Skyler: Alright, thread one — Dog Science and Discovery. And today we are talking about something that I think every single dog owner has experienced and maybe blamed themselves for — the teenage dog. You know the one. Your sweet, eager-to-please puppy who knew how to sit, stay, and look at you like you hung the moon — and then somewhere around six to eighteen months old, they just... stopped listening. They started making eye contact with you and then doing the exact thing you just told them not to do. Sound familiar? Frosty, I see you. I feel like you definitely had a phase. Skyler: So here's the thing — this is not a training failure. This is biology. And veterinary experts have been talking about exactly this in a really thoughtful Q&A published recently in DVM 360, which is a veterinary medicine publication for professionals. And the insight there is genuinely fascinating. What's happening in a teenage dog's brain is a lot like what's happening in a human teenager's brain. The prefrontal-equivalent regions — the parts responsible for decision-making, impulse control, and responding to social cues — are still developing. They are literally not done yet. The wiring is still being laid down. Skyler: And on top of that, hormones are surging. If a dog hasn't been spayed or neutered, that's a huge factor. But even dogs who have been altered can go through a behavioral teenage phase because so much of it is neurological, not just hormonal. The brain is reorganizing itself. It's doing important work. It just happens to look, from the outside, like your dog has forgotten your name and everything you ever taught them. Skyler: What the experts emphasize — and this is so important — is that this is a phase, not a permanent personality change. The advice is to stay consistent, keep training sessions short and positive, don't punish the dog for being developmentally where they are, and maybe most importantly — don't give up on them. Because the dog who drove you a little bit crazy at fourteen months can absolutely become the steadiest, most reliable companion of your life. I genuinely believe Frosty would back me up on this one. The best boys go through rough patches too. Skyler: The other thing I love about this conversation in the veterinary world is that it's changing how vets talk to dog owners. Instead of a client coming in and feeling like they've done something wrong, the vet can say — hey, your dog is a teenager. Here's what's happening in their brain. Here's what to expect. Here's how to get through it together. That reframe is everything. It keeps dogs in their homes. It keeps people from surrendering animals during a hard but temporary developmental window. Knowledge is so powerful, and I love that science is giving us this. Skyler: Thread two — Dogs and Humans. Oh, this one. This one made me so happy. So there is a program at VCU Health — that's Virginia Commonwealth University — called Dogs on Call. And it's a therapy dog program that brings volunteer handlers and their certified therapy dogs into the hospital to visit patients, staff, students, families — anyone who could use a furry, wagging presence in a hard moment. And recently, one of their long-time volunteers reflected on ten years of service with the program. Ten years. Can you imagine how many people that dog and that handler have touched? Skyler: Think about what it means to be in a hospital. Maybe you're scared. Maybe you're in pain. Maybe you're far from home and you miss your family, you miss your own dog, you miss anything that feels normal. And then this dog walks in. This warm, gentle, wiggly creature who has no idea what your diagnosis is, no idea what your insurance situation is, no idea what's hard about your life — they just come in and they are HAPPY to see you. Completely, unconditionally happy to see you. That is medicine. That is real medicine. Skyler: Dogs on Call at VCU Health has been recognized as a model program. The dogs who participate go through rigorous temperament testing and certification — not every dog can do this work. It takes a specific kind of steady, gentle, people-loving personality. And the handlers are trained too — they learn how to navigate a hospital environment, how to read their dog's cues, how to make sure every visit is safe and positive for the dog as well as the patient. It's a real partnership. Skyler: Ten years is a long time. Over the course of a decade, the same handler and dog team — showing up, week after week, bringing that gift. I think about what that kind of consistency means to a place like a hospital, where so much is uncertain and so much changes. These two became a constant. A familiar face — or, well, a familiar snout. Frosty would have been magnificent at this, by the way. He had exactly that quality — that warmth that just rolled off him and made you feel like everything was going to be okay. Skyler: And here's what I keep coming back to — the volunteer. The human half of that team. Ten years of giving up their time, bringing their dog in, navigating hospital hallways, holding space for people in really vulnerable moments. That is an extraordinary act of love. For dogs. For strangers. For the idea that connection heals. I have so much admiration for people who do this work. They see what dogs can do and they say, yes, let's share that. Let's take this out into the world. Skyler: The research backs it up too. Studies have consistently shown that even brief interactions with a therapy dog can lower cortisol — that's the stress hormone — reduce self-reported pain and anxiety, and improve mood in hospital patients. It works for kids, for adults, for elderly patients, for staff who are burned out and running on empty. Dogs just — they unlock something in us. Something that was maybe locked up tight by fear or grief or exhaustion. And they do it so effortlessly. Like it's nothing. Like it's just Tuesday. That's Frosty energy, right there. Skyler: Okay. Thread three — Understanding Dogs. And I have saved what might be my absolute favorite story for last, because this one represents a shift in how we think about therapy dogs that feels genuinely revolutionary to me. There is research happening right now at the University of Saskatchewan — USask — and it is doing something kind of radical. It is asking not just what therapy dogs do for humans, but what the experience is like for the dog. Skyler: Flipping the script, they call it. And I love that framing so much. Because for a long time, the conversation around therapy dogs has been almost entirely about human benefit — which makes sense, because the humans are the ones who can talk. But dogs can't fill out a survey. They can't tell you if they're tired, or if a certain environment stresses them out, or if they actually enjoy this work. So for a long time, we kind of just assumed they were fine. Or we watched for obvious signs of distress and called that good enough. Skyler: The USask researchers are going deeper than that. They're looking at physiological and behavioral markers — things like cortisol levels in the dog's saliva, heart rate, body language signals that are subtle but meaningful. They're asking: is the dog stressed during visits? Do certain environments or certain types of interactions affect them differently? Is there a way to structure therapy dog work that's better for the dog's wellbeing, not just the human's? And I just — I think that's beautiful. I think Frosty would think that's beautiful too. Skyler: This connects to something bigger that's been happening in the world of dog science over the last decade or so — this growing recognition that dogs have rich inner lives, that they have emotional experiences that matter, and that our responsibility to them goes beyond just meeting their physical needs. Dogs are not just tools for human benefit. They are participants. They are partners. And if they're going to do emotionally demanding work — walking into rooms full of sick and grieving people, being touched by strangers, navigating loud and unfamiliar spaces — we owe it to them to understand what that's like for them. Skyler: And this is where technology is becoming such an exciting part of the story. Wearable biosensors for dogs — small, non-invasive devices that can track heart rate variability and movement and stress indicators in real time — are getting more sophisticated every year. A I is being used to analyze behavioral data from videos of dogs, picking up on microexpressions and posture changes that a human observer might miss. We are building better and better tools to listen to dogs in ways that go beyond what they can show us on the surface. Skyler: There is also a related and fascinating area of research happening at Washington State University's College of Veterinary Medicine, where a summer research fellow named Jyot Patel is exploring what's called the canine gut-brain connection. This is the idea — well established in humans, and now being studied seriously in dogs — that the gut microbiome, all those trillions of microorganisms living in the digestive system, has a direct line of communication to the brain. And that means what's happening in a dog's gut could be influencing their mood, their behavior, their anxiety levels. Mind-blowing, right? Skyler: If we can understand the gut-brain axis in dogs, it opens up possibilities for treating anxiety and behavioral issues through nutrition and microbiome health — not just medication or training. It's a whole new frontier. And it makes me think about every dog who has ever been labeled difficult or anxious or reactive — what if some of what's driving that behavior is something happening in their body that nobody has looked at yet? What if there are dogs right now who could be helped in ways we haven't figured out yet? That question keeps me up at night in the best possible way. Skyler: And I want to mention one more story today because it fits so perfectly into this thread of dogs and humans working toward something meaningful together. There is a future service dog named Blue — and Blue's story starts with volunteers at Charles Schwab who got inspired to support a service dog organization. Blue is being raised and trained to one day be a life-changing partner to someone who needs them. And what I love about this story is the chain of inspiration — regular people, doing their jobs, deciding to make space for something bigger. A dog gets trained. A person's life gets changed. And it started with a group of people who just said, yes, we want to be part of this. Skyler: That is what dogs do to us. They inspire us to be better. To give more. To care about something beyond ourselves. Frosty did that. Every dog who has ever been someone's best friend has done that. It's their superpower. Skyler: Well. What a day of dog stories. Teenage brains finding their way. Ten years of hospital hallways and wagging tails. Researchers finally asking how the therapy dog is doing. A puppy named Blue with a big future ahead. And scientists listening to dogs' guts — literally — to understand their minds. I just love dogs so much. I love them. And I love you for loving them too. And I love Frosty, always and forever — the best boy, the reason this show exists, the dog who makes every single episode worth making. This one was for you, buddy. Skyler: Frosty the Dog, brought to you by Frosty — the best boy — along with Ada, Ago Consulting, and Zen Semiconductor. If today's episode made you smile, or made you hug your dog a little tighter, please subscribe so you never miss a story, and share it with someone who needs a little more dog in their day — which is everyone, honestly, everyone needs more dog. All the links and sources from today's episode are in the link in show notes. Stay curious. Keep celebrating your dogs. And we'll see you next time.