Your dog may be suffering from separation anxiety for different reasons. They may be getting stressed when separated from you (or from another specific person), when left alone (and it doesn’t matter where) or due to conditioned fear (meaning something scary happened when they were left alone before and now they think that might happen again).
Common Signs of Separation Anxiety
Common signs of separation anxiety are excessive vocalisation, chewing, anorexia, incontinence and drool. You can check for these signs once you get back home, especially next to windows and exit/entrance doors.
Found any of the signs? Before getting desperate, take your puppy to the vet and check if there’s any other reason why these symptoms are occurring. Once they’re medically clear, you can start doing some work for dealing with separation anxiety.
“The whole process is about building faith, trust and confidence, not suspicion”
How To Deal with Separation Anxiety
First exercise – Distance is Key
Choose a comfortable spot in your house to ask your dog to lay down. Then start getting some distance from them and rewarding them every time with a nice cuddle and some treats. When you feel confident, practise in other parts of the house building distance and duration.
Second exercise – Relax Take It Easy
Create an environment for your puppy to rehearse relaxation and settle. It may be a new bed or a mattress or even a blanket that you set on the floor next to the sofa where you’ll be calmly laying down. Drop some treats on it and invite your dog to discover what a nice spot that is. They will probably want to settle once they find out that treats are coming consistently. Don’t stop dropping treats, especially when a puppy drops their head, let’s out a nice long sigh and lays flat out onto one side. Keep practising every evening for a few days and then start asking for a down (exercise one above) on their new comfort spot!
Third exercise – Introduce the Chill Zone
Create a chill-out zone where you will be leaving your dog when you go out. Scatter plenty of great treats around, leave some nice toys and place the settle mat/bed/blanket (above) in there. Then allow the puppy into the area and watch passively. Repeat this a few times during some days.
Now start asking for downs in the settle mat within the chill-out zone. Practise a few times. Then start to come to the chill-out zone with your dog and while they’re exploring around, leave them for a while. Build up duration and distance over the sessions.
When the puppy gets confident being alone in the chill-out zone for 30 seconds – 1 minute, you can gradually add some elements of your leaving routine. Grab your keys, for example, or put on your shoes, and return to your dog in the chill-out zone. Slowly add more elements, such as getting a coat, opening and closing the front close, and back to the chill-out zone again.
You don’t have to always add more and more. On the contrary, you want to alternate longer and shorter periods of absence in order to build resilience.
Hopefully, after many sessions, your puppy will be confident enough to be left in their chill-out zone alone for a long time. Make sure that every session is enjoyable and fun so we’re pairing “time alone” with only good things!
Socialization is Best
Day-care is a nice way of improving your dog’s behaviour through socialization, exercise and mental stimulation. It can even help with anxiety issues.
Dogs can learn a lot from the other dogs that they are surrounded with, we highly recommend socializing your dog to assist with separation anxiety.
If you want to learn more about separation anxiety, we recommend reading Easy Peasy Doggy Squeezy, by Steve Mann, where we took these ideas from.
