How To Treat Separation Anxiety In Dogs

Hi, my name is Stan Rawlinson. I'm a dog behaviorist and obedience trainer. This is Charlie, he's a rescued mongrel and today, I'm going to be talking to you about separation anxiety.

In 15% of all the cases I have to deal with, separation anxiety is at the fore, that's a high percentage and that is because this dog and all other dogs are a pack animal, they get pleasure, as we are a pack animal to some extent but we've learned also to be alone, but we're not happy alone and these dogs are not happy alone and that's where the separation anxiety comes from. What it all requires, very simply, is slow desensitization from being a young dog or very very slow desensitization if it's an adult dog, I find there's more rescue dogs that have separation anxiety because there anxious that you're going to go and leave them again and never come back like the last owners did, so that can be quite common. It is an anxiety disorder that is based on insecurity and they believe may never ever see you again.

The way to start is, if it's a puppy, is to start extremely young and gradually give it slow absences, now what you do is you create a goodbye bone or a Kong, you put a special filling in, freeze it, so it helps the teething and everything else and when you leave, you give it this goodbye bone, you put your coat on, walk out the house, walk out for 15 to 20 seconds walk back in, put your keys down, take it off, take the goodbye bone away, switch for another treat so it doesn't think your stealing it, and then slowly build it up from 15 seconds to your absences to 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes until you can get to an hour, once you can get to an hour and the dog is happy your are fine, you've broken the back of it, but it has to be done sensitively. Leave a radio on, not in the same room, vitally important that it isn't because it will know that those voices or that music is not really someone else in the house so it's better to put it on in another room and if you can put it on talk radio, L.B.

C., something like that, even better. If you going to put music on, classical music probably the best one, it soothes the dog.

Make sure it's comfortable crates, we look at it as prisons, they look at is as a den and a dog with separation anxiety they can go in here, will feel more secure as long as it's introduced correctly to them, they then see that as a secure place, once again slow desensitization. So set meal times correctly gradually introduce the dog to more and more absences, each time you do it, give a pleasurable side of it, the pleasurable side is the goodbye bone and there is a set of recipes on my website which will allow you to make these goodbye bones or Kongs for the dog. Take your time if you've gone too fast, the dog will react and show you've gone too fast, take two steps back and gradually desensitize your dog over a period of time so it allows you to have those absences without your dog wrecking both your kitchen or its own life, some dogs actually self harm, they pull paws off, they will gnaw to such a degree, dogs have been known to gnaw, gnaw pads off completely and to injure themselves and to eat their way through walls and through doors, so start early if you can.

If an adult dog and a rescue, take it even slower, perhaps build it up over a period of between 6 and 8 weeks. There's only a limited time I can spend on this particular subject, it's quite a long subject, so you need to look a little bit further into this to be able to help some of these quite distressed dogs. So look on the internet, look at my website, www.

doglistener.co.uk, it has full separation anxiety article from myself on there and it will help you.

Best of luck with your dogs.