14 — Breaking Down the Life Stages of Our Dogs

The whole one year of human life is 7 years of dog life; some of that isn't right. But it kind of gives us a feel for what we think of puppy, teenager, adult, elder. Marty and Laura walk through those life stages and some of the things that we can do to ease or utilize those times that we have with our dogs. Everyone says it's too short, and they're right. So we talk about some ways to look at it differently and to understand it better. "Teenagers need to learn boundaries," Marty said. "Teenage dogs, teenage children, teenage ponies, they all need to learn boundaries. It's just a thing, and it's our job. It's our responsibility because we love our family pets, children, cats, dogs, horses; it's our job to teach them those boundaries." "Now, if you've got an adult dog that's earned its place and it's got its life lessons, you can now do some great things with your dog. You can go do stuff and do events. I mean, like, this is the great part of dog life, this two to five, two to six time frame, and it's a blast; they're so much fun. So this is when you get out of the basic obedience class and you start doing fun things like agility or rally or scent work, or you start taking the dog to the national parks and the local lakes and all the fun things that you get to do. "But, of course, you have to remember that not everybody loves dogs. 58% of the people own dogs. Another 42% probably don't want anything to do with them, so you can't just let your dog run up to everybody and slobber all over them because not everybody appreciates that. You can't let your big dopey dog run up to every other dog either. And just because your dog is friendly, it doesn't mean that the other dog is." Next week we'll talk in depth about our senior dogs and the joys and sorrows of that life stage. The Marty & Laura Show is produced by Pure Dog Talk Inc., with sound design and editing by Premium Audio Services.