The Common-sense Dog

One of the biggest challenges I see dog owners struggling with is separation anxiety, but what people may not know is that separation anxiety is a learned behavior. Dogs don’t simply develop separation anxiety out of the blue. They are conditioned to that response over time.

Separation anxiety can be classified as anxious or stressed behavior whenever the dog is left alone. This might look like pacing, whining, barking, panting, drooling, pottying in the house, or destructiveness toward the crate, objects in the home, or the dog itself. These behaviors can be mild or very severe.

If you dog struggles with mild to moderate separation anxiety, you should be able to make progress with some tweaks to your daily living. If your dog struggles with severe separation anxiety, please consult a professional.

Now let’s talk about why dogs develop separation anxiety. Granted there are some cases of dogs that have experienced extreme trauma or abuse and the result is separation anxiety, but this article does not pertain to them. This article is for your average family pet (whether from a breeder, rescue, or shelter) that has developed separation anxiety.

When I say separation anxiety is a learned behavior, I mean that we as humans allowed it to grow over time by never actively teaching our dogs how to be without us. We see most separation anxiety cases with people who work from home, retired folks, and adventurers who take their dogs everywhere with them. They eat with them, sleep with them, exercise with them, drive with them, snuggle on the couch with them, play in the yard with them, and then when the time comes for the human to leave, the dog doesn’t know how to be left alone.

The best way to combat separation anxiety is to prevent the dog from spending all of its time with us when it wants to. That means when the dog anxiously wants to follow you to the bathroom and bedroom and kitchen, have them go to their bed instead. When the dog is anxious on the ground and tries to jump in your lap, send them to their bed instead. When the dog is anxious in the crate at night and wants to sleep in the bed, help it work through sleeping in the crate instead.

If we allow the dog to seek and attain comfort from us any time it doesn’t want to be alone, we teach the dogs that they cannot get by without our comfort. Then when the comfort is unavailable while we are away, the dog displays separation anxiety.

Instead of giving comfort, let’s give direction. This direction will help the dog work through the anxiety, rather than simply pacifying it, or worse, nurturing it. Teaching your dog to go to their bed when they are anxious will give them stillness and teach them to address the anxiety. Doing crate drills while you are home, rather than just when you leave, will allow you to address the stress your dog is feeling rather than just having the dog explode when you leave. Teaching a dog with separation anxiety to sleep on its own bed or in a crate at night will further help it to function autonomously.

Sometimes these rules are hard for us humans to follow because we have developed our own need for comfort from the dog, but they are the best for the overall success and mental health of our pups. They deserve the best from us.

Happy training!

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Stephanie Vichinsky is the owner/head trainer of Method K9 in Post Falls.