This post is part of our series on raising our Vizsla puppy, Zooka.  You can use our posts as a guide to help raise your own puppy, regardless of breed. Keep in mind that different breeds might develop at different rates, so while you can do these things with any breed, your breed might need certain things at slightly different stages or ages.  Click here to see our list of all updates.

Zooka's ninth month was about what you'd expect from a teenager with raging hormones! Adolescence in full swing.

He is up around 48 pounds by now. Based on the size of his parents, we expect him ultimately to be around 55-60 pounds.

He is a very even-tempered happy young man. But there are definitely some changes as we progresses through his developmental stages. We cannot expect a teenager NOT to act like a teenager.

It's important to be realistic about what behavior we can expect at this age. While I do expect him to mind his manners and be polite, I know there are moments when he will forget or just can't resist. I do have expectations. But I have realistic ones. I do NOT expect him to be perfectly mannered and well-behaved every moment of the day.

Over these past few weeks, Zooka has discovered the joys of countersurfing! Mostly, he does not find anything interesting. For the most part, he's not even really looking for anything, he just wants to join me and see what I am doing.

Zooka really loves running water. He loved the kiddie pool this summer. He loved water running from the hose into the kiddie pool. He loves any chance to play in the water when one of us is in the shower. And he has now discovered that water also runs in the sink! So countersurfing FOR running water is a new favorite hobby.

Zooka did get one nice reward for countersurfing one day. Ed had cooked a whole chicken. Unbeknownst to me, once cooked he removed it from the oven and set it on the EDGE of the counter. And then left it alone.

Now, normally, that would never be an issue in our house. Our dogs have always known to leave along stuff on the counter no matter how good it smells. But sometimes my spouse forgets that we have an adolescent dog in our house again who still is not fully clear on all those rules.

So, Zooka got a few nibbles before I discovered what he was up to. Ed is fortunate that he did not lose his entire chicken that day. I am hopeful they are both learning, but I would only be willing to consider placing bets on one of them. We won't say who. You already know.

He has also been doing more jumping. Prior to this, he was really not much of a jumper and was most of the time very good at greeting with all four feet on the floor. We are having to watch that a bit closer now.

When Zooka was a youngster, when we first brought him home, one of his favorite “toys” was my slippers. When they were on my feet, especially. Rather than fighting it, I simply stopped wearing them for a while when he was in that young bitey shark-teeth puppy stage.

Later I was able to pull them back out and wear them with no problem. Now that it's winter, I really really want to wear my slippers around the house every day. Keeps my feet warm. But now that adolescence is in full swing, the behavior that HAD disappeared, has returned. That happens sometimes. We are still re-learning that mom's slippers are OFF LIMITS. Work in progress.

We continue with our play dates, though most of these are play time with the boarding dogs who stay with us. If we have dogs staying here who make good playmates for him, then we don't need to set up as many play dates. He's been getting plenty of social activity!

We've continued with group classes. He gets distracted, especially when starting a new class. And most especially when one of is very best buddies is in the same class. Wow, is it hard for him to work when he really really really wants to play with one of his favorite friends in the entire world. But for the most part, he is doing really well.

We continue with our daily training. At seven months, we switched from three to two meals per day. We continue to train for almost every meal.

We keep working on Heel work, Come, Stay, Wait, and all the “basic” stuff. We also work a lot on other things like Touch (nose to hand), Target (nose to object), Shake, nail trims, Spin, Over, Under, Lift (rear leg lift), and other stuff.

Between our own outings and a new round of our Polite Pooches in Public Class (which Ed brings Zooka to) we are getting more outings in. Things like Home Depot, Lowes, Aspen Grove Shopping Center, Murdoch's, local parks.

I wish I had more time and warmer weather some days to get more outings in. I would really love to be able to do daily outings but that's not realistic for us based on where we live, our schedules, the weather, the daylight hours, etc. But we try to get him out one to two times per week. We do the best we can!

I think I've hit on most of the highlights for this month. So I will wrap up there. We still have lots of work to do but we're in no rush.

Training and clear expectations need to be combined with time to mature before we can expect a really really well-behaved dog who makes good choices (at least the vast majority of the time)! I don't worry about the not-so-great moments, I focus on the long game.