Home Alone – Dealing with Separation Anxiety
Are you coming home from work and finding chaos and destruction? Are your neighbors complaining about excessive barking while you’re at work? Did you make a 15-minute run to the store and come home to an overly excited greeting from your dog and a fresh stack of poo? You may be experiencing separation anxiety.
Separation anxiety is best described as fear and anxiety when a dog is left alone. It is one of the most common behavior problems that dog owners experience. Signs may include continuous whining and barking, destroying furniture and household items, scratching or chewing door and window frames, digging at the floor in front of the door as an attempt to escape and house soiling. These things happens because your dog has decided that being alone is scary.
Unfortunately, putting your dog in a crate or room and letting them “bark it out” with the mindset of “they’ll eventually get over it” doesn’t work in this situation. Your dog is truly afraid.
It’s perfectly understandable to be angry when you come home to find chewed up shoes and piles of poo, but guess what? Punishing your dog won’t work. First off, a dog with separation anxiety is already in a negative emotional state. Yelling or any other punishment will just increase your dog’s fear and anxiety and compromise your dog’s trust and bond with you. Second, unless you catch your dog actively chewing up your sofa, your dog won’t make the connection of what the punishment is for.
Many dog owners mistakenly believe their dog destroys the house out of spite when left alone. Maybe you’re saying “my dog knows what it’s done and looks guilty” when you come home from work to find pillow feathers everywhere. No, that’s not what’s happening here. Your dog is offering you appeasement gestures. These are the “I come in peace” gestures that dogs display to defuse conflict. They can smell that you’re angry and can also tell by your tone and body language. Although the pillow party was a few hours ago and they’re sorry you missed it, your dog remembers you’ve been angry in the past about the pillow feathers, even though they’re not sure how the feathers got there.
The only way to combat separation anxiety is to teach your dog to be truly comfortable being alone. This must be done in the tiniest of baby steps and it is very important that your dog never be put in a situation that they can’t handle. You will need a camera for this. You will also need to learn your dog’s signs of distress, so you return to your dog before they start to panic. This helps your dog learn that you will return and being alone isn’t scary. Signs of distress might include whining, panting, yawning, salivating, trembling and pacing.
As you’re working through this, it is critical that you never leave your dog alone. If you do, your dog will regress and any progress that you’ve made will be thrown out the window and you’ll remain in a vicious cycle. So, get a good friend, relative or neighbor that the dog is comfortable with lined up to stop by and dog sit. Or find a nice doggy daycare while you’re working, or one with drop-in services while you run errands. Or even better, a holistic dog trainer that will amp up your training with day training for you. (See what I did there? Wink wink ) I also highly recommend allowing your dog to accompany you on errands to dog friendly stores to deepen their exposure to the world and better your relationship. So, take your dog treats and make it a training adventure (depending on your dog’s emotional state, of course).
Your dog not only needs to learn the world isn’t a scary place, but also needs to build confidence, have routines and structure, and foster a healthy relationship with you.
