What is Separation Anxiety?
Separation anxiety tends to be a catch all term that refers to any problem behaviour the dog exhibits when they are at home alone, you may also hear it called separation related behaviour, or separation related problems.
Essentially, canine separation anxiety is a phobia. A dog with separation anxiety is actually afraid of being left alone and enters panic mode when dealing with ‘alone time’.
Some dogs can also develop very intense attachments to one person and can be absolutely fine when that person is around, but will panic when separated from those people specifically (even if they are still with other people or co-owners).
Symptoms or behaviours of Canine Separation Anxiety
If your dog displays any of these behaviours when they are separated from their significant human, it is highly likely that they have separation anxiety:
Panting
Trembling
Yawning
Licking lips
Vocalising
Attempting to escape (via exit points like the front door or crate door)
Destruction of household items (typically something that smells like the dog’s guardian or significant human)
Inappropriate elimination in the house
Pacing
And more…
All of these behaviours are a direct result of the emotional problem that the dog is experiencing from being left alone.
Imagine this scenario: Your phobia is spiders. If someone left you alone in a room full of spiders and webs, how would you respond? Depending on the severity of the phobia you might try to escape, scream, tremble and possibly even hurt yourself as your fears took over from your rational patterns of thought.
This is the same for dogs.
Alone time when a dog has separation anxiety can lead to some really undesirable behaviour. So, how do we tackle this?
Solutions for Separation Anxiety – ‘Desensitisation’
Fear is the most important thing we need to tackle when dealing with separation anxiety and the way we can do this is with a technique called ‘desensitisation’.
We need to reduce the dog’s sensitivity to their ‘alone time’. We do this by introducing periods of separation in very small increments, only moving forward at a rate the dog is comfortable with. We can call this ‘suspending absences’ and it means we never leave the dog longer than they can handle.
If the dog we are working with repeatedly experiences the anxiety and panicked feeding of being left alone, the training will not work.
We do not use food or rewards during these periods of suspended absence – learn more in my article why I don’t use food in separation anxiety training.
This may seem like an impossible task, but the use of desensitisation alone has proven to be very successful if managed correctly.
The Aim of Desensitisation
The result we are looking for when using periods of suspended absence, is for the dog to become bored of what you are doing and lose focus on the fact you are not there. We want the dog to refocus their attention on another activity such as a bone, a toy or simply sleeping (rather than eating your furniture!).
‘Alone time’ during training
One key thing to remember when we are using these techniques is that the dog cannot be left alone for periods of time they cannot handle (a length that will trigger their ‘phobia’ and resultant behaviours).
This does not mean that they have to be with you, merely somebody else whilst you are not there.
This may involve any of the following things:
Using a doggy day care service
Advertising for a local pet sitter
Being able to leave the dog with relatives or someone else in your local community, such as a student or retiree
Some of these options won’t be suitable and some won’t be available but it is worth noting that the success rate of this desensitisation will rely on preventing the dog slipping into ‘Panic mode’.
The Training Programme
Separation anxiety training can typically take several months. It is never possible to give specific timings or guarantees as each dog (much like each human) has different needs and will react to desensitisation differently (some faster, some slower).
When you start achieving the initial goals – which we will set out with you – nothing can beat the sense of accomplishment for both you and your dog.
For example, once they are able to be left for an hour, you will be free to run errands without worrying about your dog suffering.
Once they can be left for two hours, you could be free to have lunch or dinner out with friends.
When they can handle more than three hours alone, you could be enjoying a night out at the cinema or a show, without your dog becoming anxious.
It should be stressed here that separation anxiety training is a slow process and, as with any training programme, the initial weeks and months can sometimes seem especially slow. Once your dog is able to be alone for about thirty minutes, we should see much quicker progress, allowing us to greatly increase the increments of suspended absence.
What Does the Training Consist of?
I offer either a six week intensive programme or a one week programme to start off with. Depending on your circumstances and requirements you can choose the option that will work best for you.
The one week programme is designed for owners who would prefer to go it alone after some initial help, the six week intensive is more of a hand holding experience with longer support from The Pet Coach.
After the six week programme, we then switch to a monthly subscription.
