Separation Anxiety
Distress when left alone or apart from a person the pet is bonded to. Signs include vocalising, destruction, toileting, pacing or drooling, usually within the first half hour alone. Managed with gradual departure training, enrichment, a settled routine and sometimes medication.
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Expert guides
The departure plan: gradual absence training that actually works
A dog learns to cope with being alone the same way a person gets over a fear of deep water: in tiny, manageable steps where they are never actually overwhelmed. Not by being thrown in. The plan that works is unglamorous...
Medication for separation anxiety: when, what, and why it is not giving up
When a vet says the word "medication" for a behaviour problem, a lot of owners hear something the vet never meant: that they have failed, that they have run out of patience, or that the plan is to dull their dog into a...
Managing the meantime: avoiding full-blown absences while you train
Most separation anxiety plans don't fail on the training. They fail in the weeks around it. You build a careful departure plan, your dog starts coping with two minutes, then five, then ten, and you feel the first...
Separation anxiety, isolation distress or boredom: which is it?
A chewed door frame, a complaint from a neighbour about the howling, a puddle by the back door. Someone has told you it is "separation anxiety", and that phrase tends to close the conversation down, as though there is...
The camera test: what your dog actually does when you leave
A separation problem is, almost by definition, a problem you never see. The behaviour shows up when you are out, the one window in which you cannot know what your dog is doing (Harvey et al., 2022). So most owners are...
Puppies and prevention: building alone-time tolerance from the start
No puppy is born knowing how to be relaxed on its own. It is a skill, like toilet training or walking nicely on a lead, and like any skill it has to be learned, gently and early, before a problem ever forms. Almost no...
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