Separation anxiety is one of the hardest things I have ever had to deal with
with my dogs. If you have dogs that bark, you know, that can be frustrating.
They're barking, nonstop,
separation anxiety takes that anxiety for us to a whole new level.
I've had a number of rescue dogs each with varying degrees of separation
anxiety.
It's not easy to work through and it disrupts your entire life.
In today's video,
I wanna talk about what separation anxiety really is and isn't,
and talk about how we can make things easier for both you and your dog.
I'm instructor Carol. This is the Berk. Welcome back to McCann Dogs
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I deal with a lot of people that have dogs that bark in the house or in the
crate when they're leaving, or when they're in another room,
they immediately assume it's separation anxiety, but that's often not the case.
Dogs may bark because they're bored or they just rather be doing something or
want to be with you. It's not necessarily truly that anxiety.
They may also bark because in the past barking,
perhaps they're barking in the crate and the owners go back in in,
do you ever do that?
You go back to your dog to see if they're okay or to soothe them.
So the dogs say barking in my crate gets what I want. True separation.
And anxiety is a phobia or true fear. The dogs truly panicked.
Many dog owners don't understand this because why doesn't my dog figure out I
always come back to 'em. But the problem is at that moment, you leave,
the dog truly is panicked. Fear is irrational. Think about it.
Are you afraid of spiders? Are you afraid of Heights?
Where there really isn't a danger? It's not rational.
It's one of the reasons it makes it so hard to deal with.
So with true separation and anxiety, your dog is going to appear stressed.
They may be pacing. They may be drooling.
Their body language suggests that they're very stressed.
Many of the signs of separation anxiety, especially more mild may be similar.
Barking, absolutely. With separation anxiety,
you're gonna get that uncontrolled panicked barking. That's gonna go on and on,
but you may see something very similar with the dog.
That's just bored and just finds barking, relieves that boredom.
And when I talk drool, I often mean excessive amounts. Your dog's soaked.
It's like they've had a bath or there's a puddle in the crate because your dog
is truly irrationally, afraid and stressed.
You may also see that your dog is, um,
chewing or licking their feet,
or parts of their body causing damage to themselves.
You may see that there's significant damage to the crate itself.
They may be trying to chew their way out or being so stressed.
They're chewing on that. Again. We may see some of that with a dog.
That's just bored and saying, I want out,
but it's gonna be very significant with that severe, true separation anxiety.
One thing you might see if you are a dog, uh, if you put food in the crate,
you know, some really, yummy cheese, high value treats,
or even their bowl of food. Does your dog not touch it? Well,
you are not home sometimes. Won't but often that can be a sign of stress.
If your dog says, oh, I'm not so stressed. Now,
when there's food there tells you that stress, level's not too high.
The other thing we can absolutely see with dogs that are truly terrified with
real separation anxiety, they may vomit. They may also eliminate.
Now you need to say, do I have a dog that's stressed,
and they just can't hold it? Or do I have a housebreaking problem?
So you need to understand what's going on there. Even when I just said,
if you think your dog has separation anxiety, the rest of this video is for you.
But if you feel Ugh, maybe I don't, maybe I just have a barking problem.
Then click on this card right here for tactics to deal with barking.
We discussed that separation anxiety,
true separation anxiety is a phobia, fear. It takes time to work through fear,
whether you're a dog or a person. The,
so there's not a lot of quick fixes when we're dealing with those behaviors,
we need to go through a systematic process of desensitizing the dog to us
leaving. So those triggers picking up my keys. If I,
if I just have my dog with me all the time, I'm not gonna solve it.
But if I can getting used to just picking up the keys,
what a good boy you can see, he's nice and relaxed going to the door.
Not even going out, just open it, closing it again,
walking to the door.
So my dog gets used to those triggers that set off that fear.
And I'm slowly gonna build up, till I can go outta sight.
And I might only be out here for a minute.
Then maybe I'm leaving for five minutes, then an hour.
Eventually my dog's gonna be comfortable with me, not there,
but that takes time. So piece of cake, right?
That only took a few seconds and my dog's solved doesn't work that way.
Behaviors, even ones that aren't fear related and have us terrified.
Take time to change behavior change takes at least six weeks.
And with a deeply set fear, it's gonna take even longer. Maybe three months,
maybe six months. Behaviors are almost like grooves in the brain.
A lot of scientists will refer to grooves in the brain for those habits.
We have, we need time where our dog's not rehearsing that behavior.
So those old grooves of being terrified, erode away.
And we need thousands of repetitions of a really easy level
of trigger that my dog says.
He sees that and over time gets desensitized to it.
He's no longer bothered because it's no longer a predictor that he's being left
alone for a long time. So you've got a long road ahead of you,
but I'm gonna look at a few tips that can speed up the process,
or for some of you that are dealing with separation anxiety that's not as
strong. You may have some well ask their success.
Now here's the biggest mistake people make. Well,
they work through that desensitization process. Often people do that.
They put on their coats, they pick up their keys,
they open the door and they say, it's not working.
My dog's not getting any better. Here's the twist. It's not easy.
I'm working through those triggers to say it's okay.
And when you see me start to leave, but life is real.
I've still gotta go to work when I'm not working those drills.
And if I'm now leaving my dog alone for four, six hours,
they're rehearsing that fear. It's maybe irrational. They don't need to be,
but they are. And that's undoing all of my desensitization work.
My dog's not gonna to change that behavior.
I had to deal with that with my terrier Newman-Bing, you know,
I was working through desensitization, but at the same time I had to go to work.
So what was I gonna do with Newman? If I leave him alone,
one he's so stressed. He's screaming, he's eliminating, he's throwing up.
I don't wanna see that. Plus my desensitization is not gonna work.
So I'm gonna go through a couple of different scenarios that may help you manage
your dog. When you are not working through the desensitization process.
Some cases we can find a situation where we leave our dogs and they aren't
stressed. If we can do that,
that's fantastic because I can take my time working through desensitization.
And I've got this other place where my dog can be.
Now that may require getting a pet sitter that might require your dog going to
somebody else's house while you work through the process.
But sometimes we can find something,
just a different picture where our dogs are fine.
If your dog is loose in the house, switching to a crate,
maybe all it takes. They may, that extra confidence in the crate may be fine,
but it's still important that I create this new picture because there's so much
stress associated with the old picture.
I wanna change the picture while I'm working the new behavior. So, uh,
I'm gonna change the style of crate. I'm gonna change the size of crate,
you know, for, so some of you, uh, some dogs when they're outside crated,
you know, with probably a little more of a run, um,
are actually fine when their owners leave.
There's not that same degree of stress. Sometimes going from, you know,
a crate three times, this size is gonna be okay, sometimes going even smaller.
So he's a little cramped, but they feel or secure can work.
I'd wanna make sure that, um,
if my dog was panicky that I didn't have this collar on.
So it's not getting caught in the crate.
If he's really trying to push around and move around.
So we always wanna be careful that we create a situation. That's gonna be safe.
In some cases, going to a crate, that's an X-pen. You know,
that doesn't have the top and the bottom or going to a large, large, um,
tent can work. But if I have a dog that's highly destructive and panicked,
they may rip through that.
I need to make sure they're not gonna be chewing on the wall and swallowing
something they shouldn't. So safety is the number one priority.
As we try to get a little creative finding new pictures,
this is a great preventative strategy for separation anxiety.
Having the dogs focus on something else like food,
instead of thinking about us leaving,
you may need to work through the desensitization process a bit before you get to
this part where your dog's willing to take something, but I've got a treat, uh,
dispenser here.
It's got two little openings so I can adjust how many treats or how easy it's
gonna be. Berk is pretty good at getting treats out of here.
So I'm gonna load up a few just so you can see how it works.
And I am going to, would you like to go in your crate Berk?
You would now see that when he's got that he's oh,
let me actually make sure it can open. Yeah, there you go.
So some treats can come outta there.
So now he's probably gonna be far more interested than that than he is
worried about me leaving.
Here's my number one tool for preventing separation and anxiety,
but also for dealing with it. Once my dog is able to, um,
take some food while I'm in the process of getting ready to leave.
This is a great tool.
Now the Kong is wonderful because I can stuff things in there.
I could put a large biscuit. I could put kibble, uh, I can put peanut butter,
which is very high value. I'll use that to begin with. Eventually,
maybe it's just yogurt or it's, uh, some soft dog food, some pumpkin,
little messier. Um, I'm gonna start with some peanut butter with dogs,
cuz it's pretty high value.
Initially what I'm gonna do is I'm actually gonna put this in the crate,
but I'm not gonna put the dog in the crate.
So now instead of my dog saying, oh, she's gonna leave me. Where is she?
Um, and thinking about me, he's now thinking about man, I wanna get in there,
forget about my owner. I want that Kong.
So now there's been 10 minutes or so where I'm getting organized to go.
And my dog's not thinking about me. He's not stressing about that.
He's been thinking about this crate and that Kong.
So now I'm gonna have him go in. I'm gonna ignore him.
I'm just gonna open the crate and say, okay, I'm not telling him,
no goodbye, I'm not talking to him. And then again,
I'm not gonna make eye contact.
I'm going to leave very nonchalantly without talking to him.
So me leaving no longer becomes that huge trigger for
stress because he's not focused on me. See how relaxed he is.
He's not focused on me.
Here's a mistake that so many people make with their young dogs.
We feel guilty that we're leaving our dogs.
So it's like we get them or in close. It's okay, buddy.
I'm gonna see you tonight. We're gonna have a long walk.
We're gonna have so much fun then boom, I'm out the door.
So we go from this, you know, real excitement. I'm there to nothing.
I want my dog to say. I,
all I care about is that I don't mind my person leaving at all.
The same thing applies. When you get home, we need to ignore the dogs.
This may be really hard for you. We'd like to see them. They wanna see us.
But again, if things are calm when I'm not there and it's such excitement.
When I come home, that's just gonna feed that separation and anxiety.
So I wanna spend about 10, 15 minutes where I don't make eye contact.
I totally ignore my dog. I can move around the house, do other things.
Then after 10 minutes, then I can let my dog out, and then we can visit.
I'm still gonna be calm as I let him out. Great. That's good, boy,
we're gonna go outside. He can do his business and then I can visit with him.
Now Kong's my number one tool for dealing with separation and anxiety and
certainly for preventing it. I've got two other very important tools.
But before I go on,
I wanna talk about a few products that you will see advertised
a lot around separation anxiety. So one is, um, a product.
That's a fair amount. That's supposed to relax dogs in my own experience.
I haven't seen that work. However, when I've been using it,
it's been fairly severe cases of phobias.
You can also use calming scents. You know,
some sense are designed to promote that you can have music playing.
That's very relaxing for your dog, for some dogs that will help.
Sometimes that helps change the picture. I'm terrified,
but suddenly now this new scenario has this interesting scent and music playing
in the background. The other product that I have had some success with, um,
there it's an anxiety wrap.
And the idea of this is based on that when dogs are wrapped up like this and
feel the pressure on the body, uh, it actually relaxes them.
And there is science behind that, for sure.
I have found some help with that. That does help. If there's limited,
if your dog has severe separation anxiety, throwing a coat on,
isn't going to get you that solution.
And it's really important where a lot of people fail.
They get the coat hoping it's gonna work, put it on their dog.
That's terrified as you walk out the door.
Now this becomes a trigger for stress. The minute this goes on, I'm terrified.
So we need to spend time putting this on. When the dog is totally relaxed,
we can make it part of this new picture. That's fine.
And it may help speed up the process. A little bit. 10 years ago,
I had my first experience with separation and anxiety with my own dog, Earl,
a Great Dane who is a little bit older. So it was invaluable.
If I'm gonna solve a problem, I need to know what's going on.
So I would always make sure I was recording him when I left.
So I was able to see the progress from an hour of
unsettled behavior, standing, staring some drooling. To the point where,
um, weeks later I could see that when I left, he would leave his Kong,
look up at me and then circle, lie down and go to sleep.
So having a camera, just your phone.
Now you don't need to go buy an expensive pet monitor.
You can use your phone or an old iPad. You can check it out when you get home.
Or, uh, I often FaceTime. If I have a new dog,
I'll set up one phone and another device and I can actually see them live.
See if something's going on, or hear if they're getting unsettled.
What does that look like when you are home with your dog and you're not working
that desensitization exercises? Well,
I'm not gonna have my dog on my lap or with me a hundred percent of the time,
cuz that's just gonna build that need to of me there.
So I'm gonna have Berk lying down,
maybe across the room and just chilling out that it's okay to be around me.
I can still interact,
but I want periods where he's away from me and life is good. In fact,
I'm probably gonna have him in another room for part of the time so I can be
moving around the house. He can hear me.
He doesn't have to be at my side all the time. Now,
if you haven't trained your dog to hold on a mat,
let's talk about how we might do that.
So I'm gonna let my dog learn that good things happen when they're not
right beside me. So me leaving is not a bad thing. What a good boy.
And I might just start with him holding there. Yes.
What a good man and yessing that he is holding.
That means you're perfect at that moment. Yes. Then I'm gonna come back in.
I could even do a little toss. Yes. And I'm gonna toss that treat. So again,
good things happen without me even close. Yes. Good boy.
One thing we haven't yet talked about that many,
many people make mistakes with is the use of rewards and our correction with
separation anxiety, with separation anxiety. There's no place for correction.
I sometimes get asked, should I use a bark collar? And it's like, no,
remember separation anxiety is a,
irrational feel it's involuntary.
So I can't correct a dog for something they can't control.
So I definitely don't wanna use a bark collar.
I also don't wanna get crossed with my dog,
telling them they're wrong because they can't control it.
I need to help work through that process. Correction's not gonna help at all.
And it may create other behavioral issues. So we're not gonna use correction.
Is there a place for reward in dealing with separation anxiety? I,
I would say yes, but it needs to be done carefully.
I need to know that I'm truly rewarding the right behavior.
If my dog's stressed or barking,
I don't want to be rewarding inadvertently that behavior.
And sometimes there's not a lot of pause in their barking. So I have to be very,
very careful that said I can. I also wanna be careful that you know,
my dog's quiet for a minute. I go back in and again,
I'm not building that separation. It's all about me.
So when I use a reward for separation anxiety,
most often I do it using a remote rewarder.
I've got a remote treat trainer here.
And so that it delivers the treat right into the crate.
I've got a really high tech thing here. Just a bottle.
I've cut off the neck, duct tape it to it. So now when I press my button,
it delivers the treat right into the crate.
So now I can be anywhere in the house. I don't have to be in sight.
He can be rewarded for the appropriate behavior.
Now this is where it gets tricky. I wanna make sure he's not barking,
but I'd also like, like to know that he's relaxed.
So I might hear him chewing on his bone. Perfect. I can press that button.
He gets rewarded. If I can tell, you know, he's lying down.
If I heard some snoring, great, he's relaxed.
That's when I want to reward this without me in the picture,
I could also set up my camera. You know, sometimes I'll FaceTime my dog.
So now I can see that he just laid down. He's totally relaxed. Again,
great time to deliver that tree.
The good news is that separation and anxiety can be greatly reduced so that you
can live a normal life with your dog. If you have a very,
very severe case of separation anxiety,
you might wanna seek out the help of a professional to help you work through
that desensitization process.
Whether or not you're dealing with separation anxiety,
you're dealing with a dog that's barking or whether it being proactive,
and you're looking to prevent separation and anxiety.
This video's for you on that note, I'm Carol.
This is the Berk happy training.