Your Puppy Isn't Bad. They're Tired.

There's a moment every new puppy owner has. The puppy is biting your hands. They're running in circles. They're barking at nothing. They stole a sock and won't give it back. And someone (your partner, your mum, a stranger on the internet) says: “You need to train that dog.”

What they should say is: “That dog needs a nap.”

The overtiredness problem

Most of the behaviour people call “bad” in puppies isn't bad at all. It's dysregulation. And the most common cause of dysregulation in a young puppy is simple: they've been awake too long.

Puppies under four months need 18 to 20 hours of sleep a day. That's not a rough estimate. That's what their developing brains require to process new information, regulate their nervous systems, and grow. When they don't get it, the wheels come off.

Rebecca spotted this immediately with Marlowe. Coming from paediatric nursing, she'd seen it in babies a thousand times. The fussy, inconsolable infant who just needed to be put down to sleep. Same thing. Different species.

What overtiredness looks like

It doesn't always look like yawning. In puppies, overtiredness often looks like more energy, not less. Here's what to watch for:

• Biting that escalates even when you redirect
• Zoomies that don't end, especially in the evening
• Barking or whining with no obvious trigger
• Inability to settle even in a quiet room
• Seeking and then rejecting attention
• Glazed eyes, frantic movement, loss of impulse control

If your puppy is doing three or more of these at once, they probably don't need training. They need to be put to bed.

The 1-up / 2-down schedule

With Marlowe, we use a rough framework: one hour awake, two hours sleeping. During awake time, she has access to us, a couple of toys, and whatever training we're working on that day. After an hour, she goes into her crate, the cover goes on, and the house settles.

We don't wait for her to tell us she's tired. By the time a puppy shows overt tired signals, they're usually past the point of easy regulation. We enforce the nap before she needs it. Proactive, not reactive.

This was the single biggest lever for us. Not recall training. Not treat games. Sleep.

Rebecca's developmental lens

What makes this framework work is the understanding behind it. Rebecca doesn't think of puppy behaviour as something to correct. She thinks of it as communication. Every behaviour is the puppy telling you something about their internal state.

A biting puppy might be teething. They might be overstimulated. They might be overtired. They might be trying to initiate play. The behaviour is the same. The cause is different each time. If you skip the question of why and go straight to correction, you miss the thing that actually matters.

What to do right now

If you're reading this at 9 PM with a puppy who's lost the plot, here's what to do: pick them up gently, put them in their crate or pen, cover it, and walk away. Don't negotiate. Don't feel guilty. They need to sleep.

Tomorrow, set a timer. One hour awake, two hours down. See what happens. Most people are stunned by the difference.

Your puppy isn't bad. They're tired. Let them rest.