Avoiding Dog Separation Anxiety With Your Dog

When it comes to having perfect canine companions like these pooches here, one of the things that you want to make sure that you are absolutely avoiding is separation anxiety. When it comes to leaving them alone, you want them to be able to be left alone, happy, content, calm and quiet. And in today's video I'm going to give you some tips to help guarantee success and avoid separation anxiety at all costs. So the first mistake that people make is leaving their house in the wrong way. I know it's tempting and you care so much about your dogs and you're concerned that they might struggle when you leave them and you want them to know that everything's going to be okay. But the worst thing you can do is when you leave is to come there, oh boo-boo, it's going to be okay, I'll be back soon, oh boop, look straight away. As soon as I start bringing that energy in, their energy lifts, I'm arousing the dog, I'm bringing in the opposite of calm. And then, they have no idea what you're saying, you just disappear and leave for the day and you've left them in a state of arousal. The best thing you can do is tire out your dogs, do some work with them, bring that energy level down and then leave in a calm, relaxed fashion. Leave your dogs in a calm, relaxed state and you'll find that your separation anxiety issues right there will almost disappear. Thank you Riley. So the next tip has to be around crate training. When it comes to separation anxiety in particular, crate training is absolutely your best friend. Teach your dogs to love their crates and you will find that separation anxiety there alone will never happen. Now there's other tips that we're going to talk about in this video to help guarantee success even further, but I cannot speak highly enough of the power of crate training and you absolutely can have your dogs love their crates just like Riley does here. So if we now know that you need to leave in the right way, if you're struggling, you absolutely should be utilizing crate training, well exactly can be said for arriving in the wrong way. If you're making that mistake, you're making the act of you coming home an overly stimulating experience, which means that your dogs are waiting for that stimulating experience and it contributes massively towards separation anxiety. So we've just talked about arriving in the wrong way, we've talked about leaving in the wrong way because so far we've been focused on our dogs not wanting to be left alone. But how about we think about flipping the script? We get so concerned about our dogs hating being left alone, why don't we work on having our dogs love being left alone? So if the mistake is that our dogs hate being left alone, what can we do to make them love being left alone? This is part of my crate training process. My go-to strategy is using a Fenway Hammer, I fill it full of their favorite treats or their raw food, meat pate works beautifully, stick that bad boy in the freezer overnight and 10-15 minutes before I leave the house, I'll pop that hammer in the crate. But then I'll shut the crate door so that the dog can't get into the crate. Then you'll notice that over time, your dogs will be excited to get into the crate and if part of your leaving routine, where you're being calm, relaxed, not paying much mind to the dog whatsoever, you go to the crate calmly, you open the door to the crate, the dog goes in, you shut the door and you leave. If you make that the routine, what you can actually do is have your dog be excited for being alone because being alone means that they get to go into the crate and they get their favorite thing in the form of a frozen Fenway Hammer and you will completely flip the script. Not only having a calmer dog and a more relaxed dog, but a dog that actively looks forward to being left alone because they know what that means, they know what's coming when you leave and that way, everybody wins, you and the dogs and what could be more beautiful than that. So just by following those tips guys, you will have massive success with avoiding separation anxiety no matter your dog. I hope you enjoyed it. Do Eileen a favor here and subscribe if you're new. We do videos like this every single week and we all can't wait to see you on the next episode.