I have a 21 month old Czech male who is going through teenagerhood, he's rather pushy, but basicly a super dog. Totally confident, social, fearless. He still has some puppyish behaviors, and seems less mature than the West German workingline dogs I know. His body is changing much now though at this age.

Question: When does a friendly, bold, outgoing social dog develop boundaries with strangers and a more serious side to defining those boundaries?

Example: We temporarily live in a city high-rise. At age 18 months, my dog was sitting in the elevator with me. A strange man entered wearing black leather gloves. The man was looking at my dog chatting to him my dog listening curiously, then the man rather suddenly grabbed his muzzle, squooshing it into puddinglike, amoeoba shapes. My dog just gave a politely melty look, before casually deciding it'd be kinda fun to play paw-the-hand. The entire response was very "puppy" behavior.

Yesterday: My dog was waiting in a sit as I opened the building door for us to go outdoors, and a man we had passed several times in the halls came up behind us, greeted me, and grabbed the top of my 21 month old dog's head, and scrunched the skin-flabs up a bit gently. My dog grinned back at the man, clearly wanting to break his sit to play and nudge the man.

My dog is social, clear-headed, has intuitive sense about people. I am only wondering when or if he will develop a sense of stronger boundaries about being touched? I socialized him A LOT from 9 weeks on. Does being Czech lines mean he will be a teenager for a very long time before maturing into himself? Do all Czech dogs take themselves more seriously at some point? I am happy with him as he is. I simply expected he might have more of a sense of boundaries at his age. He seems rather puppy still.

"All" doesn't exist. Not all dogs from any lines are going to be the same, or even any good as a working dog. Not saying about your dog, just in general that there is no standard for "all" cz dogs.

He might be social and tolerant of touch for the rest of his life, no way to know that. Socializing "a lot" helped him be social too.

He might change any day now or maybe not till 3 years old, maybe never. The puppyish stuff will likely go by 3 but the social behavior there is no telling. My WG dogs are around 18 months old and still happy social pups. They bark aggressively at passers by, but would jump up and lick their face given the opportunity. My dogs are not very well socialized. They have interacted with less than a handful of people in their entire life, yet still love everyone. It's just how some dogs are.

Wait and see is all you can do.