"I swear he wasn't like this yesterday."

The dog that's grabbing clothes, barking at everything, jumping and squealing or struggling to listen.

I know it feels like it happened overnight.
What if it didn’t?

What catches people out is that dogs don't reset to zero after a sleep.

Excitement can carry over, long after the ball has been put away.
Frustration can carry over, even when there's no obvious cause.

A busy weekend gets added to the counter too.
Sometimes even a busy week.

We don't want to stop the fun.
We see them happy.
Engaged and loving the intensity.
Wanting to interact over and over again.

So we keep saying yes.

We excuse it.
"He's just a teenager."
"She gets mouthy when she's happy."
But eventually we can end up with a problem that excitement won't solve.

Because we've added more onto a dog who was already carrying the days before.
And the days before that.

That's why over-arousal can be so difficult to spot.

It disguises itself as fun.

As excitement.

As "the best day ever."
And it does that day after day.
Week after week.

And then we add more to “tire them out”.

The trouble is that sometimes the last thing an over aroused dog needs,
is more.