Fixing separation anxiety for good: 2
Part 2: Building patience
If you haven’t checked out part 1, then we highly recommend doing so. Click here.
While in part 1, we focused in one the foundational 3 golden rules - in part 2, we are going to be looking at the remaining 3 parts of the chart.
The 3 remaining pieces are going to focus in on the separation part itself.
But remember that patience isn’t something everybody’s born with, it has to be trained, grown and practiced day by day. Don’t expect your dog to be fixed after 1 day.
Place
Place training, or as some people call it crate training, is a very important part in making your dog more confident.
Place training isn’t just about locking your dog in a crate for X hours of a day, but it’s more about giving your dog a space of their own.
We have a whole topic about Place training in our app as well - we recommend checking it out!
You first want to start with just getting one paw unto the place, then two paws, then 3 until your dog is fully on the place.
And after your dog is comfortable going to the place, then you want to reward staying there.
If it’s comfortable enough, then your dog is going to go there on it’s own - especially reward those moments.
Make your dog feel really good about going on the place. It’s going to give your dog their own personal “room” in your house.
Chew toys
The second to last important piece is chew toys.
Every dog owner knows about chew toys, but few actually take the time to actually focus in on them.
If you didn’t know, dogs release a lot of their energy through their mouths. And with separation anxiety, it is really useful, if we can focus as much energy as we can into controlled things, such as exercise and chew toys.
With chew toys, you need to find a chewable food or toy that can be filled with food.
Good enough won’t do - your dog needs to actually LOVE the food or toy.
The chewable food should also last for 20 minutes. If it’s gone within 2, then it’s too short.
Here are some recommendations, with links to Amazon:
Kong toy + wet food. CLICK HERE TO OPEN AMAZON
Take a classic Kong toy. Fill it with any type of freeze-able food, canned wet food is the easiest and put in the deep freezer.
Make your dog a ice cream made from dog food. The freezing part makes the toy last longer.Long lasting chewable animal parts. CLICK HERE TO OPEN AMAZON
Get your dog an animal part from the store, that is all natural, with no color modifications or anything like that.
Bully sticks for example is a great option. They are though, but they taste really good for for dogs.
If one Kong lasts for 20 minutes, just get multiple ones. Fill them all with food, freeze them and give them all!
You can give Kongs and chew toys together as well, the more the merrier!
If your dog likes the food item, then it might turn out that your dog will start looking forward to you going away - because the food that you give during those times is SO GOOD!
Wait
And the final piece of the puzzle is of course - practicing waiting.
Patience isn’t given, it’s trained. And that’s exactly what you have to spend time on as well.
For starters, begin with the Wait command and trying to take just one step away. See if your dog has enough patience to even wait that long.
If yes, then during the next repetition, take two, then 3 and so on.
Read about it in our app as well.
After the steps, try going behind a corner. Then try and add an activity such as touching the door or making some sort of sound.
Keep building up the Wait command piece by piece until you can see that your dog is getting more and more patient.
Put it all together
Then, once you have practiced the Wait command, Place command and found a good chew toy, put them all together and start leaving your home in small increments.
Give your dog a good amount of exercise, put your dog on their place, give them a good chew toy and remember to not react in a big way.
Leave your home at first for just 1 minute at first and come back. Remember not to react immediately when coming back.
If that doesn’t go well, wait for your dog to calm down and leave again for 1 minute the same way. Keep grinding this again and again unti you leaving and coming back becomes boring.
Once your dog starts finding this exercise monotonous and isn’t reacting as much, then you can start increasing the time you are away incrementally. 1 minute becomes 2 minutes, then 5, then 10 and so on.
Dogs don’t understand that even if you leave, everything is alright. That is why you need to work on this with many small trips outside.
You can stay outside your door until your dog stops whining and barking as well - the end goal is the same. You need to show your dog that worrying is not needed here.
Haven’t heard about Pocket Puppy School before?
Pocket Puppy School is a completely free dog training app. Our mission is to make information about raising dogs accessible to everyone in the world.
But in addition to our app, we have a blog (that you are currently reading 🤓) where we talk all things about dogs.
We post some informational and fun content to our Instagram page and believe it or not, we even have a merch store. 🥹 In the store you can get a t-shirt or a hoodie with your own dog picture that we will make into an awesome design.
Feel free to check out all of our channels, and if you have any questions, leave a comment down below.
Thank you!
