05/24/2026
🐾 Gunners Sunday Shenanigans 🐾
👉You think your puppy is high energy. They are not. They are over-tired.
👉You try to tire them out, with longer walks,and more play, and it just gets worse.
👉Here is why. The exhaustion trap.
When a puppy stays awake too long, stress hormones (cortisol) build up. Those hormones do not make them sleepy. They make them wired, hyper and bitey.
So you add more exercise, and guess what that does? It raises cortisol even more. Now you have a puppy who looks like they need a marathon but actually needs a nap.
You are not tiring them out, you are building an endurance athlete.
The zoomie lie. Zoomies look like fun. Wild running, spinning, biting the air. 🌪️
That is not play. That is a stress release, a nervous system short-circuiting. Your puppy is not having fun. They are dysregulated.
What they need is a quiet space. Darkness, no stimulation, twenty minutes of sleep.
The bite pressure clue. When over-tired, the part of their brain that controls impulse shuts down. The mouth gets harder, they are not being bad, they cannot help it.
If your puppy’s biting gets worse as the day goes on, that is not aggression, that is exhaustion.
The settling problem. Their body is exhausted and their brain will not stop. They want to sleep but cannot get there alone, they pace, they pant, they whine.
They need you to enforce the nap. Put them in a quiet space. No words. No eye contact. Let them figure it out with you nearby.
The test. Tomorrow, when your puppy goes crazy, do not add a walk. Add a nap. Twenty minutes.
👀 Watch what happens.
The truth: Most “high energy” puppies are just over-tired. A 20-minute nap changes everything.
💤 Nap first. Train later.
Does your puppy get worse with more exercise? Tell me below.
