Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Hi all,
Vanilla are planning an update to the site on April 24th (next Wednesday). It is a major PHP8 update which is expected to boost performance across the site. The site will be down from 7pm and it is expected to take about an hour to complete. We appreciate your patience during the update.
Thanks all.

Seperation Anxiety?

Options
  • 10-05-2021 3:32pm
    #1
    raralala
    Registered Users Posts: 1 ✭


    Hello,

    We have a 8 month old puppy and from the time we got her she has never really been left alone (our mistake! ) We have been working from home so there has always been someone around for her.

    She is crate trained (at night) but is in the room with us. During the day she normally just hangs around wherever we are but lately we have needed to leave her alone for an hour or two and training her has been torture!

    She has a cage in the kitchen and when we put her in with some treats she is quite happy for us to leave. However when the treats run out or she gets bored she starts howling/ barking and crying and doesn't stop until we return.

    I don't like to see her upset but I don't know what else to do. All the advice seems to be is leave her with food and increase the times you leave her until she is happy by herself but we have never gotten past 15 minutes (when the food runs out) We have left her longer but as I said its just non stop barking and howling. Even with us in the house she won't tolerate being left in a room alone.

    Has anyone every had this issue and have any advice?

    TIA
    Tagged:


Comments

  • Options
    #2
    volchitsa
    Registered Users Posts: 7,000 ✭✭✭volchitsa


    Hi 'm not an expert but as you haven't got any replies, I thought I'd answer with what I do know. You talk about leaving her until the food runs out, but that seems far too long to start with. Maybe you're being over ambitious? As I understand it, you leave her literally for a minute or two at the start, and only when that's ok do you move on to five minutes or whatever.

    15 minutes worth of food sounds like a lot. Maybe one or two little treats so you can leave without a fuss, but then cut the length of absence down, so that she's not eating all the time you're away, but doesn't have time to get upset before you're back. Then keep increasing that time (without extra treats in the crate with her) so she's not eating all the time you're away?

    As I say, it's not a problem we've had, and maybe posters with longer experience of lots of dogs will have other advice. Also there are several threads about separation anxiety on here, as I recall.


  • Options
    #3
    zedhead
    Registered Users Posts: 601 ✭✭✭zedhead


    We had a big problem with separation anxiety when we got our dog. We rarely left him but when we did he would bark non stop the entire time we were gone and wee and poo almost immediately. We did the gradual leaving him but there were times when it was unavoidable that he had to be left for longer times. He would also bark and whine at night time. We got a crate and crate trained him for night time and that work for the night time barking and whining for a while - but he would not go in during the day at all. Then after a few months he started waking at around 4am and the barking would start again.
    Funnily enough we found a change of scenery for the dog fixed the problem entirely. We had been keeping him confined in our large kitchen when we were gone and at night time as he had been destructive when we first got him and we felt the kitchen was the room that could withstand the most damage. When he started barking at 4am one of us would get up and let him out to sleep in his day bed in the spare room/office next to our bedroom and he would be fine for another couple of hours until it was time to get up. So we decided it was time to retire the crate and let him sleep upstairs - and bingo, he slept straight through. No issue since. We then applied the same thing to leaving him home alone and changed where we left him and did a week of gradual time build up again but it was much quicker. He now has the hall, landing and spare room/office to roam in while we are out. He gets his treat when we leave and then he just goes to sleep. The only time he barks is if someone knocks on the door but will settle again after. Might be worth reconsidering where in the house he is left when you go out.


  • Options
    #4
    itsusuallyjazz
    Registered Users Posts: 72 ✭✭itsusuallyjazz


    https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=3230528947067455

    Separation anxiety can be very difficult to resolve. I would suggest researching a decent behaviourist to help here.
    Unfortunately with so many of us working from home for so long it's going to be tough on our dogs when things go back to how they were


Advertisement