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The last few years have been a whole new beast in the realm of dog training as well as the pet industry as a whole.
2020 saw pet ownership among Americans rise from 67% to 70% of all households, a major jump to make in a single year. With many workers and students in the United States either switching to work-from-home, online-only or online-majority schedules, or even becoming unemployed entirely, pet ownership became more appealing to those feeling cooped-up or lonely during the initial “quarantine” period of the covid-19 pandemic.
This has given rise to a whole new category of clientele in the dog training-sphere, the “covid puppies.” While it’s not exclusive to actual puppies, it’s true that people brought home new dogs at an unusually-high rate in 2020. The huge covid-19 doggy boom has found us with many new first-time dog owners, and with that, many new bewildered people unsure of how to deal with their now-adult dog.
Perhaps one of the most significant jumps I’ve seen as a trainer is an increase in separation anxiety cases, and with good reason. For many households mid-pandemic, there has always been someone home more or less all the time with these new “covid puppies,” meaning many of these new canine companions have never truly been alone, either for a long time, or in the case of puppies, at all.
I often get a bewildered look from my clients when I drop the truth-bomb on them: the solution to separation anxiety and crate anxiety is not less alone/crate time; it’s more.
That’s right.
You being home all the time with your faithful dog at your side is actually the cause of the panic and the destroying things and the screaming and barking and howling. At its core, separation anxiety is an intolerance to independence, an over-dependence on attention, and an inability to cope with what should be not a big deal at all: a little bit of restful alone time.
Separation Anxiety is Serious
There are a lot of annoying, undesirable, and ultimately dangerous behavior patterns that accompany separation anxiety.
Destructive tendencies in the household are one of them, with dogs all-out decimating furniture and other items in their environment. I’ve seen entire window frames ripped down to the wood and hanging on for dear life, blinds torn off the runners, carpets ripped out, drywall chewed through, and entire door frames beaten down to nearly nothing, exposing hardware, nails, and dangerous splinters of wood. Separation anxiety can get nasty, it can get expensive (and even get you evicted if you rent), and it can get seriously dangerous for your dog.
Damaging your house or apartment itself isn’t the only way your dog can hurt themselves, either. Some dogs are determined escape artists. Actually, artist is perhaps a bit too elegant a word for what I’m talking about; let’s call them escape juggernauts. They will bend or break the wires on their crates in sometimes-successful attempts to escape their crates, and they won’t stop if they break their teeth, cut themselves, or rub their faces raw pushing and prodding.
You might also find your otherwise house-trained dog eliminating from stress in the house or crate, and come home to find your home or your dog itself covered in feces, urine, or vomit. I have unfortunately seen with my own eyes the sad streaks left by a robot vacuum when a uncrated dog gets the nervous poops while their owner is away. And it’s no more fun to open your dog’s crate to find them smelling of their own urine, or have to wash mashed-up feces out from their paws.
And of course, who could forget the noise? Separation anxiety is an orchestra of barking, screaming, howling, drooling, pacing, crying, whining, and scratching. For some of these dogs, collecting noise complaints is an Olympic sport.
How to Fix Separation Anxiety
The process to fixing separation anxiety is multifaceted. It starts with keeping your dog safe and contained in a suitable crate, setting boundaries and providing structure in the normal day-to-day, proactively training towards the ability to cope with being alone, and finally working up for duration.
But that can be easier said than done when you have a howling, screaming dog fighting you every step of the way. Here is exactly how we train separation anxiety, and possibly more importantly, how you can maintain it for life.
Crate Your Dog
If you’re not currently crating your dog, now is the time to start.
Crates are meant to be a safe space to not only soothe your dog with its own quiet spot, but also provide peace of mind for you, the owner. A dog that is crated can’t be tearing out your carpet, having diarrhea on your couch, or eating drywall by the mouthful.
We have a guide to selecting an appropriate crate for your dog titled, How to Pick the Right Crate for Your Dog, which can help if you don’t know where to start yet.
If you are working on crate training your dog and they are damaging or breaking out of their existing kennel, it might be worth looking into a heavy-duty option such as Gunner Kennels, Impact Crates, or any of the other aluminum and heavy-duty options from Pet Pro Supply Co. They can be pricey, but most will last a lifetime. If cost is a serious factor, Facebook marketplace, craigslist, and other resale apps can help your find a used heavy-duty crate for much cheaper or (if you are very lucky) even for free.
The reason you want to upgrade your kennel if your current one isn’t working comes down to practice. If a dog has escaped their kennel once, they will continue the behavior of trying to escape that kennel with even more fervor, as they have essentially self-rewarded and reinforced the behavior by achieving their escape. Do not underestimate your dog, even if you think they’re dumb as rocks; they will remember what worked to get them what they wanted, and pursue it with all their might.
Keep in mind, though, that starting to use the crate is the start of the training, not the entire process. We can’t just stick our dog in a crate cold turkey for eight hours and rely on the quality of the crate to make up for poor training.
Preparing Your Dog For The Crate
It’s time to make the crate a positive place.
We often make the mistake of inadvertently contributing to our dog’s separation anxiety by making all the good stuff happen in our bubble. They take their meals in our kitchen with us waiting nearby, they take their naps on the couch while we watch TV, they get the tastiest treats when they tug on our heart strings with their heads on our laps. It’s understandable to want your dog near you and to enjoy these moments, but do consider how the timing of these things contributes to the co-dependency that manifests as separation anxiety.
It’s time to start de-condition this addiction by changing the context of the good stuff.
Start by feeding all your dog’s meals in the crate. You don’t have to close the door; just place their food in the crate and let them start eating there. You can be in the room, or not, but don’t hover. In essence, act natural.
If your dog is hesitant to go in the crate at all (which they very well may be if they have a history of fighting the crate), you can try adding a wet food or “gravy” to the food, or prepare some homemade food to mix in to entice them. Now the good stuff is really good, and the really good stuff happens in the crate.
If it’s time to give your dog a treat just-for-fun (not a training session) feed those in the crate as well, even if it only means popping in for a few seconds.
Think ahead when it comes time to kennel your dog, and get them tired out beforehand. They should be totally wiped. Walk them, run them, play fetch, do their favorite activity, but tucker them out as much as possible.
I’ll be blunt: this is a crutch, and that’s okay at this stage. While we work on building the behavior, you want your dog to be as tired as possible so that they:
- Have less physical energy to use for an escape attempt and therefore less chance of hurting themselves or self-rewarding on successful escapes.
- Have less mental energy to spend on panicking and fussing about being alone.
- Are more likely to be willing to relax, because a post-exercise nap sounds soooo good right now.
I said this is a crutch because you want your dog by the end of training to be able to go to the crate at any time and relax, regardless of whether or not they’ve been worn out. However, exercising your generally-healthy dog is always going to be recommended not just for energy management, but for their overall health and mental wellbeing.
Get in the Reps
Do not make the mistake of turning the crate into a thing you use only when you leave the house. Fixing separation anxiety is a process of building a whole new skill in your dog, and it needs to be practiced regularly.
When you begin putting your dog away, add in small sessions throughout the day, not just when you leave. Put your dog in the crate for five minutes when you’re home. When that goes okay, add a few minutes. Then a few more. Progress your dog as they adjust to new blocks of time of being alone.
Do this while you’re home, so the crate becomes no longer associated with you going away. It’s just a normal thing that they do sometimes. Alone time is okay.
When you do have to leave, start putting them away a little while before you go. Ten minutes is okay at first, then start putting them away closer to twenty or thirty minutes before you leave.
Have your dog sleep in their crate, and ideally in a different room than you sleep in. This both removes the dependency that many dogs develop from sleeping in the bed with you, and allows your dog to associate rest and sleep with the crate. It’s a good, passive way to develop some tolerance to alone time.
It’s Not Just About When You’re Gone
The ways we approach the crate and the actual alone time are indeed important to helping a dog with crate anxiety and separation anxiety as a whole. However, there are many lifestyle boundaries and methods for structuring daily life with your dog that can greatly improve your dog’s ability to cope.
Learning and utilizing the place command is one of these boundaries. Place is a command that has your dog in a designated spot usually marked by a dog bed, elevated cot, or mat. The dog is meant to stay in its spot until released by permission by the owner or handler.
Place is helpful for teaching impulse control and self-regulation of excitement. It also allows your dog to be included in your life and your space without helicoptering around you and getting what the professionals call, “all up in your business.” Place allows your dog to feel included while also practicing good habits and skills that also improve their self-calming in the crate itself.
For dogs with separation anxiety, it is a good idea to cut back on being overly-affectionate until they have developed a healthier relationship with affection and attention. This doesn’t mean that you can’t ever be lovey with your dog, but being mindful of the time and place can play a considerable role in how a dog responds to having to be alone for any period of time.
Codependent dogs will benefit greatly from less “lovey” types of attention and affection, such as structured walks, play, or taking up a sport or job together. These kind of activities build the relationship between you and your dog without contributing to your dog’s addiction to affection.
Should I Medicate My Dog For Separation Anxiety?
Understand that, while we have seen great success with many dogs using only behavior modification training, there may be some dogs that benefit from medication for separation anxiety as well.
Coming from the behavioral side of the issue, it’s usually going to be my recommendation to commit to all the training steps we’ve discussed before seeking to medicate your dog. However, I have seen dogs that do thrive after being prescribed anti-anxiety medication by their veterinarian.
I’m also very receptive to the idea of prescribed anxiety medication as a band-aid or crutch (just like vigorous exercise) to reduce the likelihood of dogs hurting themselves while we work on healing the greater issue with a behavioral approach.
Ultimately, medication can and does help some dogs with separation anxiety, but does not invalidate the value of a good training program. If your dog is already on a medication or has trouble relaxing after respectable training efforts, combining prescribed medication with behavioral training can aid in the training process.
At the end of the day, the medical and behavioral side of separation anxiety treatment can play together to help you and your dog, but if your dog is not yet on a medication, consider putting the work in to the training process, and give it a chance to work before seeking a drug-dependent solution.
Sometimes it really is about us.
Some of this advice can be hard for a lot of owners, and there are times that it seems the owner has just as much of a separation issue as the dog. But really, it’s understandable. In these interesting times we live in, so many people have brought new pets into their lives to ease the pressure and sometimes loneliness of the world as it is. It’s not unreasonable that we have become attached at the hip to our dogs, and that the process of helping them find some independence can be a difficult one.
If it’s a struggle for you personally to have some time away from your dog, consider the potential outcome and the kind of life you’ll both be able to have when you’ve both learned to enjoy each other’s company in a more secure and independent manner. And if you need more hands-on guidance or even just a cheerleader that speaks dog, it’s rarely a bad idea to get help from a good professional trainer.
Separation anxiety isn’t easy to tackle, emotionally or practically. But as you put in the hard work, progress comes. And in the end, having a dog that is safe at home, secure in themselves, and no longer leaves destruction in their wake is certainly deserving of that effort.
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