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What is Separation Anxiety?
Separation Anxiety is a fear-based condition that is comparable to phobia in humans. If your dog displays any of the following behaviours when they are left alone, it is possible they are suffering from Separation Anxiety.
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Barking, whining or howling
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Chewing or destroying floors, walls or doors
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Toiletting indoors
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Frantic attempts to escape
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Pacing
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Vomiting
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Panting
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Drooling
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Refusing food
Not sure whether your dog is anxious or just feeling bored and frustrated when home alone? This is something many owners struggle with and it can be difficult to tell whether it is fear or frustration driving your dog's home alone behaviour. The bottom line is that, for whatever reason, your dog isn't able to tolerate being alone right now.
The training methods that I use are effective for both frustration and anxiety driven home alone behaviours.
How is Separation Anxiety treated?
There is so much conflicting advice out there on how to approach Separation Anxiety training. The methods I use are based on the latest scientific evidence. They are evidence based, kind and effective.
Dogs learn through association. For an unknown reason, a dog with Separation Anxiety has come to associate home alone time with fear. In order to treat Separation Anxiety, we need to change this association and teach them that home alone time is okay.
To do this, I use methods similar to those that are widely used to treat phobias in humans. During my training packages, we will expose your dog to very small amounts of alone time in a way which prevents them from experiencing any further fear and allows us to gradually increase the amount of time they can be alone for.