Kris­tel-Marie Ram­nath

Sep­a­ra­tion anx­i­ety hap­pens when a dog that is su­per-at­tached to its own­er gets stressed when left alone.

For dogs al­ready ex­hibit­ing sep­a­ra­tion anx­i­ety, the treat­ment can be chal­leng­ing and re­quires a lot of pa­tience and time. You will need to get your dog slow­ly ac­cus­tomed to your ab­sence and change his neg­a­tive as­so­ci­a­tion with this in­to a pos­i­tive as­so­ci­a­tion.

Your dog may start to get ner­vous when he sees signs in­di­cat­ing that you are about to leave, such as get­ting dressed, putting on your shoes or pick­ing up your keys. This pro­gramme in­volves you do­ing those things, but then not leav­ing. Get dressed and go read a book. Put on your shoes and then sit down at the ta­ble. Pick up your keys and watch TV. Do this over and over many times a day un­til your dog gets bored and stops show­ing anx­i­ety when you do those things.

When your dog starts to feel less anx­ious about that, you can slow­ly start to dis­ap­pear. First, just go to the oth­er side of the door. Ask your dog to stay, then close an in­side door be­tween you. Reap­pear af­ter a few sec­onds. Slow­ly in­crease the amount of time that you are gone. Put on your shoes and pick up your keys. Ask your dog to stay while you go in­to an­oth­er room.

As he gets more used to the “stay game,” in­crease the amount of time you are gone. Then use an out­side door, but not the same one you go out of every day. Make sure your dog is re­laxed be­fore you leave.

On­ly you can tell if your dog is ready to be left alone for longer pe­ri­ods. Do not rush things. Give him a stuffed treat when you have built up to ten sec­onds or so apart so he has some­thing to do and dis­tract his at­ten­tion away from the fact that you are leav­ing.

Al­ways make sure that your dog has ex­cit­ing things to do when you are not with him. You can give your dog a long-last­ing chew such as a stuffed Kong toy, a meat-flavoured chew or a treat ball when you plan to go out.

You can al­so leave a ra­dio or tele­vi­sion on so there is back­ground noise to fill the si­lence and the hu­man voic­es may com­fort him. Leav­ing cloth­ing that you have worn in his bed may al­so be a source of com­fort as he is near your scent. Al­ways act calm when you leave and when you re­turn.

Grad­u­al­ly build up the time un­til you can leave the house for a few min­utes. Then stay away for longer and longer pe­ri­ods.

If your dog does some­thing naughty while you are out, it is im­por­tant you do not pun­ish him. Even if you take your dog to the ‘scene of the crime,’ he can­not as­so­ciate your anger with be­hav­iour he did hours ago. Your dog will sim­ply be­come more anx­ious the next time you go out.

Some dog train­ing guides may sug­gest let­ting a dog ‘cry it out.’ This tech­nique is neu­ro­log­i­cal­ly dam­ag­ing. Dogs and pup­pies left to cry it out will on­ly learn that be­ing left alone is ter­ri­fy­ing. Every time your dog be­comes high­ly dis­tressed, stress hor­mones oc­cur in the body which can take days to re­duce. This can cause neg­a­tive, long-term ef­fects on your dog’s body and men­tal state.

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