Successfully Treating Dog Separation Anxiety

Successfully treating your dog’s separation anxiety is aided in realizing that the dog is stressed out while it is being left alone.  The common denominator for all dogs with separation anxiety is that their stress induced acting out occurs while they are left totally alone.  These types of actions happening while the dog has company, have nothing to do with dog separation anxiety, and should be handled differently.

As in teaching any dog a new trick, you as the owner must keep your cool and be patient with consistent praise for the dog’s good deeds.  Punishment has no place in training an animal.  In fact, acts of punishment only stress your dog further and may increase his sense of separation anxiety.

Dogs relate a punishment with what they are actively doing at the time of the punishment, not something that happened hours or even minutes ago.  They have no sense of quilt about a punishment that takes place at a latter time than when the action actually happened.  Dogs simply do not think in the same manner as humans.

Most of the time, when actions of misbehavior are taking place, the animal is associating the objects it playing with to us, that’s why they go for our shoes and other objects we have interacted with in their presents, or objects that still carry our own scent.  In their mind, having something of ours is a close second to having us be there with them.

Dog behavior treatments go in effect of using positive reinforcement to good deeds, rather than punishing for not doing as we suppose the dog should act.

Dogs get use to routine, and keeping a routine on going at the regular times for the occurrence helps to keep the dog to calm.  So, if possible develop a routine and stick to it the best you can to decrease the stress felt by dog separation anxiety.  A dog learns to trust that your routine will be stable, and when the dog’s regular routine is out of sync, the dog suffers from anxiety and stress.

Helping to reduce our pet’s stress is of utmost importance in resolving the problem of dog separation anxiety.  Encouraging independence in our pet will go a long way to helping the dog to adapt and be able to deal with being left alone. 

Some helpful ideas would be to have other people to be involved with the dog’s routines of playing, walking as well as feeding.  These activities help to encourage interaction with other for your dog. 

Also, by making taking on the routine of not making a big excited exit or entrance while going in and out of your home will teach the dog it is all right for you to leave it by itself from time to time without any acting out of stress caused by dog separation anxiety.

By: Derek Williams