We visited some friends tonight and Arnie came along with us. They were fine with him coming, but he had to stay outside of the house and couldn't come in like he does at our house. While we were having dinner and throughout the course of the evening he was very stressed and stood at the laundry door. He was panting a bit and didn't seem like he could relax. A few times he managed to look in through the windows to see us and I could tell he was panicked. He spends most days with me and is rarely alone. Just from his behaviour tonight I am worried he might be developing some anxiety when he can't get to me. Am I a bit overly worried or is there some legitimacy in my concern?
Well, we don't want our dogs to cause our dogs stress, so if it's going to be a common thing, then you need to consider teaching Arnie to cope with this. I'm sure he was anxious because he didn't know why he was being excluded or when you'd be including him again. If you can afford one, this would be a perfect use of the Treat & Train remote trainer (about £100). I just bought one and I love it I used it for a similar application just this morning. When I'm doing most training, I can have the non-working dog settled to the side ad they don't interfere, but if I'm doing scent work, as I was this morning, they get too excited and want to join in. So I'm working on this, but in the short term, I manage it by keeping one of the dogs in the house. Now, they are more than happy to be inside alone usually, but when Willow is inside and knows that I'm doing scent work with Shadow, she gets frustrated and whines. So this morning, I just popped the T&T on the floor and pressed the delivery button every time I made a noise, which would normally make her frustrated. So, instead of getting wound up, she relaxed and enjoyed being in there. In fact, when I opened the door, which would normally have her bursting out in excitement to see if there was something for her to find, she barely raised an eyebrow at me, and went back to the T&T to see if she'd missed anything
That is a really cool training tool. Pretty pricey though. It's $179 in Australia. I will look into it more. I don't know what he is like when we are not home. It happens where he has to spend the day alone maybe twice a week. I do shift work, so I am home a lot during the days. I don't want him to develop some anxiety when I am not here because he spends so much time with me, and then when I am not there for a day or two he freaks out. Tonight was a bit hard on him I think. It is exactly as you mentioned. He was confused about being excluded. Would leaving him home be a better idea?
It would probably be easier on him, yes, if he's happy being left at home alone - I use cameras at home so I know my two don't give two figs anymore if I'm not there!
I think so, just put their shoes... he is in a strange place, he is used to be with you, he consider himself a part of your family, and in cold turkey, he is outside. Dogs love routines, dogs does not love radical changes... If you think this situation is going to be usual, you could consider trainnig for that specific situation as snowbunny advises... maybe a fancy tool like a remote training is a little bit disproportionate (unless you are going to use it frequently), I would start with simple training. Would start at home, going out and in first for some seconds up to several minutes, rewarding relaxing behaviour. When he is confident at home, introduce some other places, up to be able to handle this situation on several places. Change one variable, at a time, I mean, if you work on more time, do not increase difficulty changing the place you are working, when you introduce a new variable, reduce some other so you make it easy for your dog to be succesful, after he has been succesful some times, you increase another variable (example: time), and so on... It will take a time, but is a simple and cheap way to train your dog to handle this situations... Regards.
I agree, @pedrolo, but event if he is happy being left alone at home (which I assume he already is?), this doesn't help the situation with him being left outside at a friend's house, where he can see inside. You need to recreate the situation as near as you can. So maybe having him shut the other side of a glass door at home for a couple of minutes will get him used to that, while you get on with your everyday life. But, again, he's in his home; he knows it, he's happy and comfortable there. Very different to in a strange garden in front of a strange house, with strange people inside. If this is going to be a common thing, then see if you can take Arnie around for specific training, so you leave him for a few seconds at first and then build it up. Most of my friends would find this a bit too peculiar for me to ask them, though!
Yeah thanks everyone. He's fine when we leave him at home. I just wanted to take him along last night, just coz. Lol.
So I did a little experiment. I left Arnie home alone while I went to the shops in the middle of the day for about half hour. I came back to destruction. He clearly loses it when he is home alone and can't come into the house or find me. Tomorrow I am working, so he is gonna have to be home alone. It can't be helped. I don't know what to do about this..
Sometimes I think we get fixated on what we think might be the cause for our dog's behavior but the real reason for it might be something completely different. Arnie might be experiencing separation anxiety, but he might not. Just because these two incidents have occurred, it doesn't mean anxiety is the cause. The destruction might have happened because he was bored, or because he was excited to be left to his own devices in a room he wasn't normally in (don't know if that's the case, but hopefully you get my drift). So to state "He clearly loses it when he is home alone and can't come into the house or find me," is perhaps jumping the gun a bit, I would say. Do you use a crate at all? Dogs generally like a safe place to retreat to and used in combination with a frozen Kong or two can go a long way to help your pooch to feel happy at home when you are gone, especially at the start. Crates take some training, too, though - there is plenty of info both on the main site and on the boards here about how to do this correctly. Dogs are social animals and shouldn't be left alone for too long, especially as pups but having said that I occasionally have to leave my dog for upwards of 7 hours and he is fine. But this is a rarity and not the norm, and I always try to keep the time alone to about 4 hours max by either coming home at lunch and taking him for a walk when I'm at work, arranging someone to come walk him, or kenneling him when we are away overnight, etc. Anyhow, good luck with this - try to keep an open mind as to what is going on. If, after some time passes and he doesn't settle better even with the use of kongs, toys, the crate, etc then have a chat with the vet to see if he thinks anxiety is the cause. But until you get an official diagnosis try not to fixate on that at this point.
Yeah I see what you mean @Lisa. It could just be my own over active mind jumping to conclusions and creating problems where there are none. I am just trying to see it in the early stages before it gets worse. I crate trained him as a puppy and he is great with it and when I have to work I do leave him with frozen kongs. My situation is unique in that I might have have to leave him alone at most twice a week, and sometimes not even. But when I do need to go into the office I am doing 12 hour stints. My wife comes home in between then, so hes not alone the full 12 hours, maybe for 7 hours while shes at work. I have been taking him out during the day today and clicking and treating for calmness. I also went on two outings alone. First one ended with destruction and the second was fine. So it might be like you say, he was just bored and saw something he could stick in his mouth. Anyway, I am gonna approach this cautiously and not push things with him. Two things I wanna avoid ever having is a fat lab and an anxious lab
I also work at home, and I worked on separation at first by shutting myself into another room, initially for a couple of minutes and then building up. I could still get work done and they got used to me not being there all the time.
We have the same problem -- we can't take Snowie with us and then make him stay outside. He will bark and want to come in to be with us. It's our own fault -- we never trained him to be happy to be outside all alone while we're inside being sociable. He is very sociable and we often joke that he's suffering from FOMO (fear of missing out) because he always needs in on the action. He totally fine being left alone at home. He knows when I'm getting dressed for work (I sometimes work from home, sometimes in the office) and he is totally fine with my leaving, goes to his bed and sleeps. I tried tying him outside the supermarket the other day and I'm pleased to say he was totally fine. He wasn't relaxed, but he wasn't anxious -- as I was standing in the queue, I kept popping out of the queue to see what he was doing, and he was just standing there looking in the direction I'd walked. (Admittedly, I wasn't checking on him to see if he was happy; I was terrified he'd be stolen! So I very seldom tie him up outside a shop -- if he can't come in, then we don't go in.) But it would be nice if he could be left outside when visiting a friend. Some people don't want a dog inside their house and it would be great if he was happy to lie outside alone. Just don't think we'll ever feel comfortable making him do this...
I don't think it is necessarily separation anxiety. If we visited a friend and had to leave our dogs outside they would probably bark or stand at the door and stare, but neither of them has any separation anxiety. Tilly just prefers to be inside, if there is nothing going on outside. Cooper is more likely to go out on her own, but she would still prefer to be where we are if we are around. On the other hand right now both my wife and I are working in our offices right now, and both dogs are sleeping upstairs in the dining room. (not really very bright of them, since it is much cooler in the downstairs family room today). Both of them are perfectly happy to stay at home when we go out, although Cooper may get bored and chew something up if we don't give them something good to chew on. When we are at or cabin and they see us getting ready to go skiing, they feel that they should go too. Fine with Xcountry or snow shoeing, but not with in-area alpine skiing .
