It's fun watching a pup grow into an adolescent. Talos is now officially an adolescent. Puppy hood ends at 20 weeks (5 months) and Talos is 24 weeks – a full four weeks past puppy hood. The other dogs in the household had been allowing Talos a little more leeway because he was a youngster. About a month ago, we noticed they'd been tightening up on him – grumping at him if he stepped on them, not allowing him to chew on them whenever he wanted, that kind of thing.
Talos is a big, goofy dog. He tends not know where his body is and what the other half of him is doing most of the time. He steps on and runs into his housemates on a regular basis. If a dog has something he wants, he tries to simply go get it from them. All too often, the other dogs allow him to do that. I wish they wouldn't – Talos needs to learn good doggie manners: it's not proper to just take what you want. Very similar to the manners you'd like to instill in children, now that I think about it.
Generally, if Talos wants a drink and another dog is at the water bowl, Talos figures he can get his big head in the bowl, too. The other dog leaves, as this isn't necessarily polite behavior. I wish they'd tell him off more often. I'd much rather one of our (very appropriate) dogs teach him these lessons than a bully, stranger dog.
I was happy, then, to see Tango very politely tell Talos to quiet down. Talos has a habit of barking when he wants something. Incessant barking. In this video, Nemo had a toy Talos wanted. Talos, however was stuck on the other side of the gate with Tango. Watch how nicely Tango tells Talos to zip it. I wish we had more instances of this kind of guidance. Talos is in doggie daycare two days a week and we haven't had any reports of inappropriate behavior from them, so hopefully Talos' manners are better when he's not at home.
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