Helping Dogs That Suffer From Separation AnxietyI wrote earlier about the symptoms of some dogs that suffer from separation anxiety, but we never mentioned how to try and help them. Also remember that the symptoms can vary greatly. Our dog used to go crazy when you tried to leave the house. She would howl and try to scratch her way through the door to get out. She also scratched a few big holes in the walls of the house, she actually scratched all the plaster off of the wall.I spoke to another person whose partner had to be away from home for a long period of time and their dog showed signs of separation anxiety but slightly different from those that I just mentioned. Their dog would actually show signs of separation anxiety when the dogs owner was in the house. The thing is though that her partner was not there, this has changed the routine of the dog.Dogs thrive on routine, it is a great thing for a dog to have a routine in their daily lives that rarely changes. For them , getting up, going for a walk, doing their business, running through the fields, going home and lying down to rest is pure bliss. Then out again in the afternoon or evening doing exactly the same thing, back again for rest, food and then off to sleep. "Domestic Doggy Paradise". Then repeat that again and again every day without fail and your dog will have a happy life.However if their routine changes some way, then problems can arise. I know not ALL dogs suffer from this when things change for them, but it does happen to some dogs, and if its your dog that it happens to and you have to deal with it, then this becomes an important issue. Separation anxiety, as we mentioned before, can start for many different reasons. In our case I believe it had at least something to do with the fact that our dog, keegan, was passed around a few different families while in the dog shelter.I know that they did this with the very best intentions due to the fact that she was very ill so they w anted to keep her out of the actual kennels as much as possible. However in some studies that I read, moving dogs around like that, even with the best of intentions can be very unsettling for the dog. The first signs that you should look for to see if your dog may be liable to suffer from separation anxiety is if you notice that they follow you everywhere around the house and cant bear to be apart from you, even when you have to visit the bathroom. That is what Keegan was like.When it came to us going out she would go crazy trying to get out the door with us. You could hear her howling at the top of her voice and trying to knock the door down with her paws. So to help her get over this we started to ignore her completely at least an hour before we were due to leave the house. I know that may sound hard to do but you need as much discipline as your dog, maybe even more.When the exact time came to leave we would have her bed in the hallway as usual, put a dog chew (treat) on h er bed, all the time ignoring her and go straight out of the house without a backward glance. We did find it hard because as humans we wanted to give her a kiss and a cuddle but you have to be disciplined to help your dog, not soft.We wanted to make sure she got used to us going out of the house, but we also wanted her to realize that she was safe and that we WOULD return for her. So we would leave the house for around thirty seconds and then go back in. When we went back in we would ignore her for about five minutes before giving her a cuddle.Then we would go back out the house after half an hour, remembering to ignore her in this time, and this time we would stay out for about a minute. Remember when we went back in the house we still ignored her.We did this for around ten days and varied the time we stayed out of the house between thirty seconds to thirty minutes. However if we ever heard her start to whine or moan we would immediately open the door and walk in BUT STILL ignore her.This method worked wonders and even though it took some time and effort, it was worth it t see Keegan settling down and not getting anxious when we were leaving the house. After a while when she saw us getting ready to leave the house, she would go and lie on her bed of her own accord and wait for her dog chew (treat) when we got to the door ready to leave.A few years later we found a stray dog in the Spanish countryside. It was a Podenco Andaluz X. The Podenco breed is widely used in southern Spain for hunting. The dogs are not usually treated very well and if any particular dog is not keeping up with the rest of the hunting pack they are just left behind in the countryside after the hunt is finished. These dogs though are not like domestic pets, they are born and bred purely for pack hunting. We have a lot of wild boar that roam the hills in southern Spain and the hunters go after them all the time. Anyway we took this little wild dog into our home and in a very short period of time he was copying the behavior of our other two dogs. So when it came time to leave the house he would go and sit on the edge of his bed and wait for his treat as we were leaving, and he was basically a wild dog.There are various other hints, ideas and methods that can be used and we will probably go over things again in other posts or articles, as always please feel free to contact us at any time if you have any comments or questions.
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