Separation anxiety

[SBTMags]

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Hello, I have rehomed a beautiful 4 year old staffy. I do work full time but I walk her 1 hour and feed her before I go to work and feed her to get her sleepy. I leave her with various kongs stuffed with treats too. I have a brilliant dog walker who takes her out for an hour in the day and will eventually and slowly get her introduced to a group of other dogs with the goal that she will have extra stimulating 'pack' walks. I also walk her and work on her obedience in the evenings. I ignore her before I leave and when I return for a bit. I fully appreciate that she needs time to settle and get used to the routine and I love her to bits and have all the patience and determination to work her through what seems to be seperation anxiety. She is a clingy dog so I am trying to distance myself from her (but we still have times to play and cuddle, walks, obedience etc). It would seem, however, that she is barking for up to half an hour after I leave and after my dog walker leaves and my neighbour has complained. This started to make me really anxious and she will get the council involved. Personally, I thought she was doing fab given her recent upheaval and asked the neighbour to bear with me while I take the necessary steps to increase her independence. But, because I have been so worried about not having the time to 'recondition' her behaviour before potentially being served with a noise abatement notice which could make me liable to prosecution, I got so worked up before I left for work, Maggie must have picked up on this and barked for 3 hours til the dog walker got to her (although she was pretty much quiet for the afternoon). Clearly, my anxiety had rubbed off on her and so I need to relax so she can relax. However, I am going to take 2 weeks off work to work on leaving her while I am in different rooms, working up to longer periods, desencitising her to me walking out the door etc. I don't know if I am taking this to an extreme though as is just half an hour when I leave quite common for new dogs in a household and this will wane in time? She is non destructive although she does have a poo and wee but to be honest she can go out for a massive walk and have a poo and a wee when we get back in so I do not think that this is just down to SA (I want to work on the SA first and then the toilet training although I do praise and give a command when she goes outdoors.) I do not want to crate her as I know that she panics if she can't see out of the window (she fretted when I left her with my mum and then my mum realised something was blocking the window which she removed and calmed right down). So, I have done a lot of research on the matter and I know the text book stuff but what are people's real experiences? Has anyone used a DAP diffuser in this situation? I would be so grateful for any 'real' advice you can give me. I know that owning a dog when you work is not best ever but I firmly believe she is better off with me that in a dogs home with all of the other hundreds of staffies waiting for homes. She is part of the family and in other ways has come on in leaps and bounds so her confidence is growing but, with the possibility of my neighbour making an official complaint which may not afford me the time I need although I have spoken to an environmental officer and am fairly assured that they do give you some leeway if they believe you are trying to rectify the situation.

 

[harvi]

Hi

I have myself got a 3 year old boxer cross in May this year. Shetoo has separation anxiety. I spend fortunes on dog sitters to come in when my dog is home alone simply because I just do not want her to suffer. I have tried a dog creche but she did not get on with the other dogs. Just keep looking for the right help with this . Luckily I can work from home a lot. Your situation sounds difficult especially with neighbour problems. Try a dog creche, it might work as their are behaviourists attached to these places. I am going to get a second dog as I have always had 2 dogs and I think this helps. Other than that you know the theory behind conditioning for separation. Dont feel guilty that you have to work at the end of the day we have to earn money and I am sure you will find a solution. It is such a common problem these days. We need more day dog carers in the community just like for children!

Harvi

 

[happylyns]

My Springer Spaniel had real issues when we first got her with Separation Anxiety, and at first we thought that it was because she was new to us.(she had come from a dog training facility and was a trained gundog when we bought her at 18 months) First we realised that she didnt like being left alone in the house and was much happier to be in a kennel outside strangely! We would come down in the morning to discover that she had poo'd and wee'd everywhere and this rectified itself once she slept in a kennel outside at night.

However if she's in the house and you have to leave her then we discovered that the following was very effective:

Get her a new toy - something she can really get stuck into, and start leaving the room for 30 seconds at a time checking she is still sat in her bed. It's very important to take baby steps with this as if you then leave her for longer it can ruin the work you've put in. So starting out with really short periods of time really worked for us and we started extending this once we saw Elly wasn't worried and have now got up to a few hours alone in the house before she starts looking for us. Luckily this is all she ever has to be alone for, but with work I'm sure you could extend the time. It develops their independence from you really well. Before we started doing this Elly would yowl after around 5 minutes of being left alone and wouldn't stop until you came to see her so she has come a long way since then!