Just wondering if anyone else has had this problem ...... My four month old boy Loki is usually great throughout the day. He has a walk at around 8am & then plays, eats, trains, & sleeps in the lounge for the rest of the day. When my husband comes home at 6pm, he takes him for a walk & then Loki spends about half an hour outside in the garden with our papillon Jontay whilst we have our dinner, then back indoors & he comes into the lounge with us for the rest of the Evening until bedtime at 11.30pm. During this time he has his own last meal & then gnaws on a chew or toy & pops out to garden for toileting, & then usually he settles down for a sleep at between 8.30-9pm, with toileting when he stirs. So our evenings are usually peaceful. However ....sometimes we have real problems with excessive boisterousness when he has had his last meal & then pops outdoors for a short romp in the garden. When he comes indoors again, he behaves really bolshy ....pushing at poor little Jontay ....barking at him ....refusing to listen to either my husband or me ....leaping all over the lounge ....biting if he gets the chance. Really disturbing & obnoxious behaviour that can be a bit scary. I keep thinking that we need to find a way to manage this before he gets much older. At the moment, to avoid it, I will bring in a special treat or a new chew & often this will work & he will calm quickly & settle. But at other times, such as yesterday evening, & this evening, he will gobble down the treat, or throw the chew away, then get hold of a soft toy & start tossing it from side to side in his mouth, making loud sort of growls noises. Then he starts pushing at Jontay, & Jontay snaps & barks at him, & that works him up even more, & he starts rampaging around the lounge barking etc. So I managed to get a leash onto him this evening & he did calm down & start chewing on it, but then got hyped up again, so I removed him into the dining room into his playpen, after taking the lead off. Last night he barked for a while & then whined & I let him out after ten minutes & he settled calmly in the lounge & went to sleep. Tonight he only barked twice & then went quiet. He has been in there with door closed for fifteen minutes & I am going to let him out now & hopefully he will settle in the lounge ok ...it is now 10pm so very late getting him settled & not a relaxed evening for us. Does anyone have any ideas on what we can do to,prevent his from happening night after night? He used to do it every time we came into the lounge or even into the kitchen, but recently has been much better, but now starting up again. Barking now. Will go & let him back in with us as lo g as he sits quietly to be let out ...........

Loki came back in & was very quiet, leaning his head against the sofa beside me. I let him know that I still loved him, then he went to my husband & he did the same. Now he has slumped onto the floor & gone straight to sleep. Peace is restored, but we need to know if there is a way to avoid this. It was heartbreaking to see him so contrite when he was allowed back in with us, but I think that is probably good .....like a child saying sorry when it knows it has upset its parents, I guess.

It sounds like zoomies.. Is it a sudden burst of energy? Molly would run in circles and play with every toy, growling and shaking it. It doesn't last that long and it's totally normal. When Molly was a young puppy she did this at least once every evening.

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I believe Loki is trying to tell you he needs more playing/training time. For my two about the 4-5 mo age they became more restless, wanting more play, became more mouthy, more of everything! For mine, I increased training classes from 1 to 2 classes a week. We had obedience one day and conformation another. Each day when I got home I would take one out for a walk, good ole run, training, then the walk home. Eat, then a ball throwing time in the yard (then took the nex one). Once I got them tired, then no more behavior problems! It gets easier as they mature, but a growing puppy needs things to do, and if not, they will become a demon. Bet if you could get a bit more fun, running and ball/toy time in he might tire out better and be more ready to remember his manners inside the house.

My goldens are 1 1/2 yrs now and still need outside play/training time to burn off the extra energy, so walks and off leash or long leash time are a must to keep them happy and burn off that energy.

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My husband takes him on a twenty minute walk at 6pm, but tomorrow he will extend the walk to half an hour & we will see if that makes a difference at all. I do a game of throw the stick in the back garden with him twice a day. sometimes he loves doing that, but at other times he will play for a couple of minutes & then just lay down. Part of the problem is jealousy, I think. Ever since we got Loki, he has exhibited jealousy signs towards our six year old papillon ....he is fine with him when they are outside together, & ok with him when my husband is with them. However, when they come back indoors & I am in the room, Loki will immediately start sidling up to Jontay & pushing him with the side of his body, sometimes barking at him, pushing him away if Jontay comes over to me. My trainer says to just ignore it, but Jontay is a 4 kilo very quiet dog, & Loki is a 17 kilo very bouncy puppy, so he could easily injure him, & I don't think it is fair to allow little Jontay to be bullied, so I do tell Loki off & he sometimes gets hyped up about that.

We live in a small rural town & our trainer is a forty minute drive away, so really it would not be practical for us to attend any more classes than the one we attend at the weekend together ... her puppy classes are held at 6pm so we could not get over there in time to do them & I am not able to take Loki to classes on my own as I was injured at work a week before we got him & sustained a herniated lumbar disc with severe sciatic nerve compression, & I am waiting for surgery. It was very bad timing! But this means that due to being in severe pain a great deal of the time since my injury, & not being able to do a lot of walking due to one foot having dropped from compression damage, I am not able to run about with him or take him on long walks ...I manage to give him a morning walk of around fifteen minutes every morning, then spend hours in pain. I tried to walk him longer one day, but was in serious pain, & I am really worried about how we are going to manage when I have open spinal surgery in about three weeks.

My husband works full time, with a forty minute drive to & from work, so by the time he is home from work & has taken Loki for his walk, it is already 7pm & we haven't had dinner. I might see if I can manage to take him on another walk mid-afternoon, so that he has three walks a day instead of two, & my husband bump his walk up to ten minutes longer in the evening. Maybe that will help. Trips to the park on my own are definitely out for the time being, as I cannot twist my back to do up his harness in the back seat of car, or I run the risk of doing more damage to my spine, & the park is a long way from where we live, so not able to walk to it. We have a quarter acre property, so Loki has plenty of space to romp about in, when he wants to do that.

Molly's mom ....yes it is a sudden burst of energy & the zoomies describe it perfectly. My trainer says that puppies often do this before settling down to snooze, as they know they have excess energy to burn off before they can settle. She told me to remove the focus of Loki's energy output, which is always poor little Jontay. I have put Jontay out into the hall at times, & Loki will calm down more quickly with Jontay gone ...mainly because Jontay will bark & snap & then Loki goes even more loopy. But Jontay doesn't always want to go out into the hall, & will scoot about the room to avoid me putting him out, which Loki then thinks is even more excuse to go crazy. If I open the door & tell Jontay to go out, Loki will bound out into the hall instead, & then spot a cat & give chase, so not a good idea to do that lol.

Sounds like the zoomies. If you check on YouTube, can find many videos! This is very normal. My guy, even at 3.5 yrs. still has the zoomies from time to time. Thankfully he's learned to zoom oudoors.

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**Fraulein "Maggie" Louise 8/2/95 - 7/20/09**
*At Rainbow Bridge but Forever in Our Hearts*

sounds just like Lucys behavior before settling in for the night--lots of energy and then just dropping like a rock!!
Kinda like when our kids were little--being super rambunctious until hitting the car seat for the ride home from the grandparents