Social Isolation / Working from Home - Dog Separation Issues

Hi there,

With our current global crisis, our 10month old dog (beagle) is about to have a big change in her daily routine as both me and my wife are working from home.

As a bit of our background, our dog is very clingy. (I wouldn't say it is full blown separation anxiety as when we do have to leave her, she calms down within a few minutes after we leave and seems relatively OK when she's alone.) however, if you leave the open plan living where she spends most of her time (for example to go brush your teeth), she's scratching at the door (causing damage), whinging and barking a bit. We believe that it stems back to her being the runt of the litter and probably a level of rejection from her mother from the outset.

Anyway, up to now our dog has been going to day care 3-4 times a week and is left at home 1-2 times a week in a utility room (for fear of her damaging the rest of the house in boredom). On these days she is walked 3 times a day (morning/ lunch and evening) all for about 1 hr each....so she is getting exercised. At weekends, she gets a minimum of 3 hours walks along with playing in the garden or house. The days at day care, she's playing with dogs all day so she doesn't need walks in the evening as she's wrecked and happy to sleep. We have also brought her to training and she is quite good so she is very train-able.

The issue now for us and indeed before Co-VID 19 is that our dog is really taking over our lives with her clinginess and I fear our working from home could serve to magnify this issue. (I know this is trivial in the worlds context!!)

We have a decent back garden and an insulated kennel that I made especially for her that I would love to get her use to so that or been happy in the back garden by herself for a while. I had originally hoped to have her sleep out there (as we had our dogs sleeping outside always growing up) but I accept that may not be realistic or kind. However, her demand for attention is causing an issue.

For example, if she wakes at 6.30 / 7am on a weekend, it means we are up from 7am every morning. She's more than happy to continue to sleep to 9.30am /10am so long as I come down and lie on the couch so its not hunger, restlessness or even peeing which causes her to bang on the door at 6.30/7am on a weekend morning. I don't expect to be sleeping in to 10am at weekends but I would have hoped that I could go down and let her out to pee at 7am and leave her out sniffing and wandering for another 1hr / 1.5 hrs.

I really want to get her to like being in the garden. The problem up to now is that when I leave her in the back garden she associates that with me leaving so I wonder, can I actually use my working from home as advantage to work with the dog to get use to the garden and by extension, the kennel and come to associate it with treats and nice things....rather than me leaving.

Beyond this - now that we will be working from home, she will have no time where she is by herself so this concerns me. She will also pester us for constant attention while we are working so any advice on how to stimulate her without constant walks would be fantastic as I fear that 4-5 walks a day will only build an athlete in the long term.

Sorry for the length of post - just alot of different strands of issues kind of coming together in 1.