Katara has severe separation anxiety. Now, some of you - like me - might automatically roll your eyes when you hear that term. It gets thrown around a lot. In fact, you will usually hear it any time a dog acts out while alone, but many times behaviors that seem like separation anxiety are caused by something else entirely! Let's talk about how to identify and defeat this problem.
What Separation Anxiety Is and Isn't
Separation anxiety in dogs is a panic reaction triggered by being left alone. Signs include destructive behavior, howling, escaping confinement, excessive drooling, panting, urinating or defecating. True separation anxiety is believed to be at least partially genetic.
The same behaviors triggered by separation anxiety - digging out of fences, tearing up furniture, howling, etc. - are behaviors bored dogs may display when left alone. These dogs just want a job, and often tiring them out beforehand and leaving them with a frozen kong or other lasting food puzzle is enough to calm them.
Bored dogs can also be extremely destructive, but it's important to distinguish the difference. A bored dog can usually be managed through crate training, exercise and enrichment. A separation anxious dog will continue to act out when left alone despite these changes and will often grow worse over time.
Many dogs with true separation issues will display agitation or anxiety as you prepare to leave. Things like putting on shoes or holding your car keys can trigger anxiety even before you are gone. Dogs with separation anxiety often also act overly excited upon your return.
Let's talk about some ways you can manage and ultimately overcome separation anxiety. It will take a lot of patience and some sacrifice on your part, but we promise even the most severe cases can improve!
Katara's Case
I'm going to talk about our specific experience throughout this post. Katara has true separation anxiety. As a puppy, she was crate trained and gradually acclimated to time alone, but she developed this issue regardless. How do we know Katara has separation anxiety and isn't just bored?
When Katara reaches her threshold, she will have a panic attack - screaming and putting all of her energy into trying to escape wherever she is to get to us. At this point she is beyond rational decision-making. She has hurt her mouth and legs attempting to break out of kennels before, and when her problems first began she did damage to carpets and doors when alone for small periods of time.
Even though she is extremely food-motivated, when left alone Katara would not touch any kind of food. She became visibly anxious when we prepared to leave the house and showed other obvious signs. Furthermore, no amount of exercise could tire her out and prevent these attacks, and she never acted out when bored while we were home.
Managing Time Away
The first step of managing true separation anxiety is the hardest. Every time you hit your dog's threshold - that is the amount of time they can stand being alone before beginning to panic - you reinforce the anxious behavior. Even though there is no true threat, whenever they panic they are reinforcing their fear of time spent alone.
Knowing this, your first and most important job is preventing your dog from hitting that threshold. At first, this can be tough! But if you follow this step and others, soon your dog will improve and be able to handle much longer periods alone.
Management Ideas (eventually you do have to leave the house)
- Keep one member of the household home with your dog
- Doggy daycare
- Hire a dog-walker to break up the separation
- Leave your dog with a friend
- Crate your dog
- Exercise your dog beforehand
- Frozen kongs
- Leave the TV/radio on
The first four ideas are ways to minimize the actual alone time your dog has while you build his tolerance. The other four - the ones in italics - can help stretch the time it takes for your dog to hit his threshold (basically, they keep him calm longer), but if you continue leaving your dog alone past the point of panic he will continue to develop more severe anxiety.
For Katara, we planned our lives so she was never alone more than she could handle. Making this change - and preventing ANY panic attacks - helped her to make quick progress and now she can handle much longer periods alone. She went from maybe 15 minutes of tolerance to 5-6 hours and continues to improve.
Entrances and Exits
Every time you interact with a dog, you are training her. Training isn't just something that happens when you pick up your clicker or put on a training lead. Every interaction you have with your animal teaches her something, and if you're not careful, you can start training bad behaviors without realizing. Keep that in mind as you continue reading.
When you leave the house or return, if you make a huge deal of it, your dog will truly believe these are big events! That creates an animal that begins to anticipate your departure, is worked up before you even leave the house, and then parties upon your return. This is a recipe for separation anxiety!!
Instead, be very calm when leaving or returning. Do not say good-bye to your dog, and definitely do not party when you get home. If your dog wants to celebrate your arrival, ignore her. Once she does calm down, give her praise without working her up. You want your dog thinking that your departures and returns are no big deal.
Building Your Dog's Frustration Tolerance
Just like with separation, dogs have a threshold for frustration, beyond which they will react. For example, if your dog is fence-reactive, he may be calm when another dog is 100 feet from the fence, but as the dog approaches, there is a point when your dog will become visibly upset by that dog's presence. That point is your dog's "threshold", and you can increase or reduce it by building tolerance or by reinforcing your dog's reactive behavior.
Thresholds exist for many different things, not just fence reactivity. Before working on time spent alone, you can build your dog's frustration tolerance with other exercises that have nothing to do with alone time! This is a good way to give your dog the tools to get over separation anxiety.
Teach your dog to "leave it" and pause before eating and before leaving the house when on walks. You can add a release - our dogs respond to "okay" - so you can dictate the moment the "leave it" command ends and your dog is free to act. When playing, ask your dog to sit and wait patiently before throwing his tennis ball. If your dog is leash- or fence-reactive, do training exercises with trusted friends to reduce these behaviors.
I could write an entire article on each of those exercises, but I'm just giving you ideas here. Any time you teach your dog to be calmer and any time you increase you dog's frustration tolerance, you are preparing him for the next step of training.
Retraining for Alone Time
This is the really important stuff! We're talking about actually teaching your dog that it's okay to be alone. I start with a "down-stay". Once your dog has a solid "down" as in lie down, teach them to stay in very gradual increments. Start standing next to your dog without moving and reward for 1 second, then 2 seconds, then 3 and so on. Do these exercises at least 3-4 times a day for 5-10 minute sessions.
Make sure you are training with positive reinforcement (treats or a toy your dog loves) and not aversives (training collars or verbal scolding). You want your dog to make a positive association any time you leave, even the few seconds you walk away during a "stay" exercise.
Once your dog will stay right in front of you, begin adding variables. This includes:
- Time (ie. asking for 2 more seconds each time until your dog will "stay" for 5 minutes or more)
- New locations
- Turning your back
- Walking around your dog
- Walking away from your dog
- Walking out of eyesight of your dog
If your dog becomes stressed or breaks the stay, you are moving too fast! Go back a few steps and keep working. Eventually you will have a solid "stay" command. Here are the next steps that start exposing your dog to true alone time:
- Have a trusted friend hold the leash and reward your dog while you walk away and eventually out of eyesight.
- Ask for a "stay" and go into a different room or walk out of the house and shut the door.
- Use the "stay" command while your dog is in its kennel (door open and then door closed) and build up the time your dog stays in its kennel.
These steps can take days to months depending on your dog. At this point, as long as you have moved gradually through the steps and avoided triggering your dog's panic response, you now have a dog that can be alone. Your job from here on out is easy!
Treat leaving the house as a "stay" command for your dog. Every day, add a bit more time away from your dog, always making sure he is remaining calm and always rewarding your dog for good behavior with a treat - but remember not to make your return a party!
Eventually you will go from 5-10 minutes out of the house to 30 minutes, an hour and eventually your dog will be handling time alone like a pro! Most dogs can overcome separation anxiety with enough time and patience, but you have to start by giving them a solid foundation and gradually rebuilding their experience with alone time.
If at any point your dog does panic, it's okay. Just take a step back and don't get discouraged. There were a few times on our journey where an emergency came up and Katara had to be left longer than she could tolerate, but she survived and we did not ruin our progress.
Other Management Ideas
Separation anxiety can be an intense issue, and some dogs need a little extra help beyond training. Here are three things we haven't talked about yet that can help your dog overcome separation anxiety, but also have some downsides to consider.
Adding to the Pack
Some dogs just don't do well alone, period. Katara's one of them. When Apollo died and she was truly alone the first time, her separation anxiety hit an all-time low. We were using every idea we could think of and even talking with our vets about prescription medications, but ultimately we decided the best course of action was to add another dog to the household.
There was a two-month gap between Apollo's death and Luka's homecoming at eight weeks of age. If we had to leave her, Katara had to be kept in a metal kennel with a metal tray and nothing else in reach, or she would tear up and swallow it in panic. Even then, she managed to break out of her kennel at one point - luckily right before we got home. She stopped being able to tolerate tiny absences or even time spent in her kennel while we were home. This was the worst her anxiety has ever been.
By the end of the two months, we were working tirelessly on rebuilding her tolerance and we had already made progress. She was back to tolerating maybe an hour or so alone in her kennel. Even so, there was a dramatic change in her mood when we brought Luka home and her progress rapidly increased with another dog in the house.
That said, adding another dog to the household is a big decision. Please don't run out and get another dog just because your current dog has separation anxiety! There are so many factors - your current dog, emotions, finances, time, etc. - that need to be considered before getting a second dog. If you're already considering it, though, some dogs definitely benefit from having another dog in the house while their humans are gone.
Prescription Medications
I'm not qualified to talk about medications, but your veterinarian is! We haven't tried any prescription medications for Katara's separation anxiety. I think the decision to use these medications is very personal and one that needs a lot of research and discussion with professionals. For some dogs, these medications can truly be lifesaving, so know that the option is out there.
Psychiatric medications are not a "cheat" or a substitute for training your dog. Alone, they will not cure separation anxiety. They are only intended to help stabilize your dog and make it easier for them to learn to tolerate separation. Often they are relatively short-term, but some dogs need to stay on them longer, even for a lifetime.
We have learned two things from our vets' advice and from others' experiences. Sedatives should probably not be used on dogs with separation anxiety except in rare circumstances to keep them from harming themselves, and if your vet mentions Acepromazine, say no - this is a chemical restraint that will physically prevent your dog from reacting but can actually increase their fear of a situation.
Supplements
There are also calming supplements and sprays you can try. Like psychiatric medications, these will not cure separation anxiety on their own, but they can help. Katara currently uses Solliquin, which contains L-theanine, magnolia extract and whey protein concentrate. She started using this supplement at our vet's suggestion after Apollo's death and the bottle has lasted us about 3 months.
Since these past months have brought a lot of changes for Katara (losing Apollo, adding Luka to the pack), it's hard to say if Solliquin specifically has helped her. Regardless, it is a safe supplement intended for short-term use, so we were glad to give it a try. We bought Solliquin - which has a higher concentration of L-theanine than most dog supplements - through our vet's office, but you can find calming supplements and sprays at most pet supply stores.
What about Luka?
Like any puppy, Luka cried a bit when left alone the first few times. Can you blame him? Previously he had a warm mother and litter-mates to snuggle with 24/7, and now he was alone in a crate with bars between himself and Katara. He made a lot of fuss!
This is normal. Puppies cry when they want something, and had we taken him out of his crate and comforted him, we would have reinforced his crying. Instead, we ignored Luka and he quickly learned that crate time was quiet time because crying never got him attention. Now he only whines when he needs to go potty - and he does this outside of his crate too.
With proper crate training, most puppies will learn to tolerate separation in a few weeks or less. Gradually build their tolerance and provide them with lots of attention and appropriate exercise while you are home and you are doing your best to give your puppy the tools to handle alone time.
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