Adolescent dogs aren’t just 'difficult,' their brains are under construction. In this video, Christopher Pachel, DVM, DACVB, CABC, explains the neuroscience behind the teenage phase.
Understanding the adolescent brain can help explain some of the challenging behaviors in dogs observed during this developmental stage. To help veterinary professionals better manage client expectations and provide targeted behavioral support, Christopher Pachel, DVM, DACVB, CABC, lead clinician at the Animal Behavior Clinic in Portland, Oregon, provides a breakdown of the adolescent brain. Specifically, he discusses the brain's role in regulating emotions and behaviors in dogs, explaining the "teeter-totter" occurring between the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system during this time.
This video is from an interview on Pachel’s 2026 Veterinary Meeting & Expo session on teenage dogs.
Related: Training the adolescent dog: Consistency over correction
The following is a partial transcript of the video, lightly edited for clarity and cohesion:
Pachel: We know that—and I'm going to oversimplify things here for the sake of demonstration—when we're thinking about the brain and the way that it regulates emotions and behaviors and that relationship between emotion and behavior, we often think about the prefrontal cortex. That is the area of the brain right behind the forehead, both for dogs as well as for people, that brain region cognitively regulates arousal, that is sort of the executive center. It's really heavily involved in decision-making and sort of rational thought.
When we look at the way that that particular region of the brain operates in complement or contrast to the limbic system, that's where those emotional centers are really sort of at the forefront of the influence they have on emotions and behavioral patterns and there's this relationship that exists between them. I often describe this to owners almost as if there's a teeter-totter. If we're really, really emotional, sometimes it's hard to access that cognitive, thoughtful, rational decision-making piece of the brain. And vice versa, of we're very much in a 'this is what I do' versus 'this is what I feel' mode, then sometimes it's hard to access or regulate some of the emotional responses. So, it's a relationship. Neither is better or worse, they're simply different parts of the brain working in complement.
What we know about the brains of teenagers is that that prefrontal cortex is not yet fully matured. That often takes, in dogs, until somewhere between 2-and-a-half and 3-and-a-half years of age, give or take, depending on the breed, the size of the dog, and some other influences. What we do see, though, is on the early side of the teenage months or years—that adolescence phase—we see a dramatic uptick in the activation level in some of those limbic systems, in some of those limbic centers of the brain, in a way that exaggerates the influence of that emotionality and often overrides the thinking part of the brain in a way that's actually supposed to happen.
We're supposed to be risky as teenagers. We're supposed to break outside the mold. We're supposed to do stuff even when we know better, that we're supposed to do it differently. Our brains are kind of hijacking that process, and the same thing happens for dogs...