Hi Leo
So we have had a funny thing recently. As you can probably imagine, Leo's evil twin has also had somilar behaviour..that dreaded witching hour. Ours never barks or growls but would just 'start'
. You could see it coming..looking bored, starting to scratch the sofa-we tell her not to-she argues back with the batting paws-then the nasty faces come out and the teeth and the boxing..etc etc. You know what I mean.
So...for months we just put her out of the room. Sometimes there would be a repeat performance but 9 times out of10 she would just huff and settle down. Eventually it stopped (about 22 months?).
BUT!!!.....
We went on holiday in the camper for a fortnight and all was fine, but when we got home she started doing it again!!!!! Arrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhh!!!
We've been back a month and it is diminishing again but we've had to go back to time outs like she's 6 months old again.
We have a few theories:
1) Inca thought she had moved house to the beach and her new life was 24/7 dog walks and being with both of us 100% of the time and was really peed off when she got home and realised it was just a holiday.
2) She is so routiney that having to readjust did her head in.
3) After 2weeks of being very curtailed (on the lead a lot more in between places etc) , she couldn't cope with the freedom of the run of the house and garden and felt really cocky.
I also think that our dog is very immature (she still chews things and seems to really struggle to learn some commands) and a lotof her behaviour is very pupoy like.
I read a thing only this morning about wolves and apparently, in the wild, the pups stay with the mother dog until they are two years old. This would indicate that the adult dogs don't think the youngsters have enough savvy until that age. Bearing in mind that pet dogs taken from their mums at 8 weeks also have to learn a load of other human stuff too, it's not surprising that there are some which aren't quite up to speed at 2. Ours is definitely still learning.
On balance, I think we have to just keep firmly doing the pup training until the behaviour stops. As they say-it'll be alright in the end, and if it's not alright, it's not yet the end!!?!
That's what we're working on anyway...blind hope. It's that or beachy head for a bit of ball hahahahaha!!