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Somewhere between five and eighteen months, most dogs stop being a puppy problem and start being a different one. These six checks tell you where yours actually is, rather than where you assumed.
You need a handful of food and about twenty minutes. Run them at your kitchen table and around the house. There is nothing being sold at the end of this, and if you pass all six you probably do not need anyone.
Read this first
Most people accidentally set these up to go well and then learn nothing from them. All three of these are ways of not cheating.
Do not warn your dog. No getting their attention first, no waiting for a good moment, no setting it up. The check only tells you something if it starts cold.
Ask once. Not twice, not louder. What happens after one ask is the answer. What happens after four is a completely different question.
Pick a normal day. Not after a long hike, not after daycare. Tired dogs pass everything, which is why so many people think a problem is solved when it is only asleep.
The checks
Not what usually happens, and not what happened the best time you ever tried it. What happened this time.
Check 01
Do this. Wait until your dog is settled and the house is quiet. Get up and walk out, shut the door behind you, and stay gone for two minutes. Do not say anything on the way out. Do not make it a thing.
They lift their head, work out you have gone, and put it back down. Maybe one bark. When you come back in they are still lying where you left them.
Following you to the door before it shuts. Noise that does not settle inside thirty seconds. Scratching. Being at the door when you open it. Or the version people miss, which is a dog who goes completely still and stays that way.
What this check cannot tell you
Whether they can do it for an hour. Two minutes is the shape of the thing, not the duration. A dog who cannot do two minutes will not do an hour, but a dog who can do two minutes has not proven an hour either.
Check 02
Do this. Pick a moment when your dog is genuinely interested in something else. Sniffing a patch of grass, watching a squirrel, looking at another dog at distance. Say their name once, in a normal voice. Then wait five seconds and do nothing else.
Their head turns to you inside two seconds. That is it. They do not have to come, they do not have to sit. They just have to look.
No response. Or a response that takes four seconds and a second attempt. Count how many times you would normally say it before you get a look, and be honest about the number.
What this check cannot tell you
Whether the name will work in a harder moment. This is a medium distraction. The elk in the drainage at dusk is a different question and this check will not answer it.
Check 03
Do this. Somewhere safe and enclosed, let them get properly engaged with something. Then call, once, the way you normally would. Have something good in your pocket but do not show it first.
They turn and come, at a pace that suggests they meant it, without being asked twice.
They look at you and carry on. They start toward you and get distracted halfway. They come in a wide slow arc. Or they come only once they have seen what is in your hand.
What this check cannot tell you
Whether it will hold off leash on a mountain. This is a fenced garden with one distraction. A real recall is a bet you are placing against every other thing on offer, and most people are getting terrible odds without knowing it.
Check 04
Do this. Put something genuinely good on the floor a few feet away. Food, or the toy they actually care about. Walk them past it on a loose leash, at normal speed, without saying anything.
They see it, they think about it, and they keep walking. A glance is fine. Slowing down is fine.
The leash goes tight. They plant. They get there first and you have to intervene. Or you found yourself steering wide to avoid it, which counts as a fail because the dog never had to decide anything.
What this check cannot tell you
Whether they can do it when you are not holding the leash, or when the thing is a rabbit. Impulse control against a stationary object is the easiest version of this there is.
Check 05
Do this. Sit down with them somewhere calm. Handle their ears, one paw at a time, lift a lip, run a hand down the tail, take hold of the collar and hold it for three seconds. Slowly, no treats in the other hand.
They let you, they stay loose, and they do not try to leave. A bit of leaning away is normal. Coming back for more is a good sign.
Pulling the foot away every time. Ducking the collar grab. Going stiff and still. Mouthing your hand, even gently. A dog who tolerates it while clearly waiting for it to stop is a fail, and it is the most commonly missed one.
What this check cannot tell you
How they will be at the vet, with a stranger, with a foxtail in the ear and someone they have never met holding them down. This is the easiest possible version, with the person they trust most.
Check 06
Do this. Sit down somewhere normal with your phone or a book. No chew, no toy, no instruction. Just exist in the room and let your dog work out what to do with themselves. Ten minutes.
Within a couple of minutes they lie down and switch off. Properly off, with a sigh, not on alert waiting for something.
Pacing. Bringing you things. Standing and staring at you. Going to the window, coming back, going again. Settling and then getting up four times. Or lying down but never actually relaxing.
What this check cannot tell you
Whether the problem is the dog or the day they have had. A dog who cannot do this at four in the afternoon after nothing all day is a different dog to one who cannot do it after a hill walk, and the fix is opposite in each case.
Now what
Five or six passing. Your dog is in good shape and you are probably here because of one specific thing rather than a general problem. Work on that one thing and leave the rest alone.
Three or four. This is where most dogs sit at this age and it is not a crisis. Pick the lowest one, work on it for a fortnight, and do not touch the others. People who work on four things at once usually finish with four half-built things.
Two or fewer. Something structural is going on and it is almost never the training. Nine times out of ten it is sleep, or space, or the day the dog is having before you ask them anything. Start there before you start teaching.
The one most people fail
Check six. A dog who cannot do nothing for ten minutes is carrying a load that shows up everywhere else, and it makes the other five harder than they need to be. If you only fix one thing, fix that.
If you want a hand
Email your results with a line about what actually happened and we will tell you what we would do about it. Or take fifteen minutes on the phone, which is faster and usually more useful because we can ask questions back.
The adolescent program is called the K9 Reset. Ten days in Idaho Springs, forty minutes from most of west Denver, rebuilding what slipped in the conditions where it slipped. Puppies under five months go into the foundation program instead.