Was just wondering if anyone else has experienced this? We have worked really hard with Casper, during the day can leave him up to 4 hours at a time without a problem. We can check this through our camera set up in in the front room. Casper has all the front room and hallway. He spends most of the time asleep either on his bed, or preferably the sofa! Benson has the kitchen area, separated from the rest of the downstairs by a baby gate. We keep the dogs separate, to give them space, also because Benson has a habit of chewing Caspers bed, or the rest of our meagre and dwindling collection of cushions (when will he grow out of that???) The problem is this, if we leave the house with Benson, and leave Casper on his own, he gets very, very distressed. To the point of breaking out, opening the front door, checking windows and even opening both patio doors.This has got worse. We are tackling this in a similar way to how we managed this originally with ourselves..going out for 5 mins, 10 mins etc and leaving Casper with a frozen kong in the meantime. So far I have to admit we haven't had much success. We have even tried sneaking Benson quietly out the back door. No fuss, just out quietly. A lot of time we are simply just using or driveway, or field, and training them both in turn, trying to train both at the same time can get complicated. Casper finds immense satisfaction by breaking out, and meeting us on the driveway, sometimes he races past Benson to grab the dummy. I swear he is grinning when he does this! Not so funny when we had Spero here visiting though. That time we were lucky as for some reason Casper stayed put outside the gate, just wagging his tail. Any thoughts greatly appreciated! Or maybe we just resign ourselves to the fact whereever Benson goes...Casper goes too!
Hi Kate, we have a bit of this with Shadow, too. Willow is absolutely fine to be left alone, but Shadow barks and barks, which isn't great when you live in an apartment block!! Now the winter is over, we're going to start addressing this in earnest. Luckily, at this time of year, we're pretty much the only people in the block, so a bit of barking isn't too much of an issue. My strategy is for J to take Willow to work with him, so I have Shadow to myself at home. Then, just as I did with Willow when she was a little pup, I will go into another room for a few minutes, building that up to an hour or so. I like this approach because the dog knows you're there, so has that as a comfort, but also can't get to you, so learns to self-manage. Once the time in separate rooms builds up to maybe half an hour, I'll also start actually leaving the apartment for a minute or so. I can "go and get something from the car", for example. When I get back home, there is no fuss and I don't greet him unless he's completely calm. And obviously, don't go in if he's barking, either. I'm hopeful that this will work as a strategy, as it did with Willow. I think it's very important that they learn to be alone and separated from one another, because this could be forced on us at some future point.
As another prong to everything, I want to be able to train them together, and at the moment we can only do very basic stuff together. I'm working on their settles, which are very good at a basic level, and will start bringing this into short sessions when we're all together. So, J can have one of them settling (by standing on their lead and ignoring them) for a couple of minutes while I train the other at a distance. My plan with this is to end up with a strong cued settle (when there's only one dog) that doesn't need to be on the lead, and just relaxes by my side. Alongside this, when I have both of them, working on having one dog settling tethered to something (fence or one of those things that screws into the ground) and, eventually (!) being able to settle without the need for a tether while the other one works. It's a long-term plan!!
I have to leave Gypsy and Tatze alone often as they are trained separately. I worked up to it by leaving them for short periods, only long enough to finish a Kong - then I would leave two Kongs and make it longer etc. But I never leave either of them for more than two hours. I also have them boarded completely separately (different homes) when I'm on holiday - this helps a lot to. This way they get used to both being alone and being together, it gives them confidence to be alone, I think. snowbunny has the right idea too - no fond farewells and no greeting ceremonies when you get back. A lot of anxiety can be due to anticipation of this.
I wonder if it would help to crate train Casper? I mean properly, over a couple of weeks. I was super impressed by how well this worked with Charlie. His crate is in his pen, and if he's in his crate he immediately settles. Not so if he is just in his pen. And if Casper is in a crate he can't get a big reward for breaking out of the house, which definitely is not going to help in terms of getting him to settle instead of throwing his energy into the great escape plan....
Thank you for all your replies very helpful to help build a strategy going forward. Like Snowbunny, I think we can now focus on this, hubby has taken a month off to get some stuff done around the house/garden. We worked from day one on separation anxiety, so Casper is crate trained to the point of having all his tasty chews/kongs and meals in there. We don't put him in the crate however if we are just taking Benson out for his 10 min training sessions, and that's when we first noticed the problem, and the breaking out! So we will start that right away.I guess lots of frozen kongs for Casper, have ordered some sachets of fish 4 dogs salmon mousse (thanks Charlie! ) They are separated during the day if we are away, and when we are around they don't tend to follow each other around. Benson is absolutely fine when Casper is out training, just the other way round we have re-runs of the Great Escape! I really like Boogies suggestion of building up some independence and confidence with Casper, so will look at the odd day where Casper stays here, and ask Naya to take Benson for a day to play with Harley?
I think that's a good idea, Kate. When Willow was spayed, Shadow went and stayed with a friend for two weeks and I think it did the pups a lot of good to be separated. Shadow wasn't left alone at all, because my friend has a dog of her own, but just being apart from one another was beneficial, I'm sure. She's away for a while now, but I'd like to see if she'd be up for having one or other of them every now and again for a day or two to continue working on it.
