Separation Anxiety

It has happened to many of us: We leave the house, sometimes for only a few minutes, and our "best friend" proceeds to chew up the furniture, bark or howl, and/or eliminate in the house.

If your dog behaves this way when you leave your home, it is probably suffering from the behavioral problem known as separation anxiety. (Note: Medical problems can be the cause of such aberrant behavior; these must be ruled out before you can safely assume that you are dealing with a case of separation anxiety.) Before you can successfully treat a problem like separation anxiety, it is helpful to know what causes it.

Dogs are considered pack animals; that is, they prefer to associate in groups rather than act as loners. Because you are its owner, a dog will consider you part of its "pack" and will constantly want to associate with you. When you leave, you separate the dog from its pack, and this creates separation anxiety (Illust.2-9 ). This behavior will be magnified if you tend to make a big fuss over the dog when leaving or returning to the house. Furthermore, certain other behavioral patterns on your part, such as rattling the car keys or turning off the television, can be associated to your departure by the dog.

When treating separation anxiety, you must remember that it is an instinctive behavior; it is not due to disobedience and/or lack of training. As a result, overt punishment for the act tends to be unrewarding. In fact, most of these dogs would rather be punished than left alone! The key to treating this problem lies in planning short-term departures, then gradually lengthening them until your dog gets used to your absence.

Begin by stepping out of the house for ten seconds at a time for the first few days or so. Hopefully this will allow your dog to get used to you leaving the house, since it will learn that you will return soon. Vary your training session times throughout the day. The idea is to gradually lengthen your leaves of absences (30 seconds at first, then one minute, then two minutes, etc.) so that your departures soon become second nature to the dog.

Points to keep in mind when attempting to break your dog of this annoying behavior are as follows:

1 .        Don't make a fuss over your dog within five to ten minutes of your arrival to or departure from home. This will help keep the excitement and anxiety levels in your dog to a minimum. During your training sessions, try not to re-enter the house while the dog is performing the undesirable act. Doing so will only serve to positively re-enforce the dog to repeat the act.

2.         Eliminate any behavior that might key the dog off to your departure, such as rattling your car keys, saying "goodbye" to your dog, etc.

3.         For the dog that likes to chew a lot, provide plenty of nylon chew bones to occupy its time.

4.         Leaving the television or radio on while you're gone seems to help in some cases.