What next for separation anxiety?

blackcob

blackcob

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...yep, this again. :o

We'd made remarkable headway since she came all those months ago and for the past month or so she's been left for up to three hours a few times a week with no incidences at all - or at least, no howling or destructive behaviour. She's still not just lying down and sleeping but I'll take 'sitting in the crate waiting quietly for me to come home' as a huge improvement on death-howls and raiding the fridge.

However, this past week I've come home twice to her howling the house down. On both occasions she was only left for 10-15 minutes while I popped to the shops. Then, today, she began howling as soon as I shut the back door, proper anxious barky howls like I haven't heard since she first came home. :confused:

I can't think of any incident which might have precipitated the sudden regression, I really can't, it just seems like she's taken a massive step backwards for no good reason and now I'm having to go right back to shutting the back door and immediately coming back in, leaving for 30 seconds etc. :(

We're following all of the usual crate training advice, she's on Zylkene as suggested by the vet and there's a DAP diffuser right next to her. I leave smelly t-shirts, favourite toys, bones, stuffed kongs etc. and of course she's thoroughly exercised before she's left. To the point, actually, that when I get back she zonks out and sleeps straight away because she's so tired. Nothing has changed in the routine at all.

Any ideas?
 
Aye, didn't you get a mahoosive new crate? I'm sure I remember seeing pics and thinking what a lovely new palace it was for Dax :) If it's that she might adjust again fairly quickly. I would image that it would be like starting from the beginning again, only that she would adjust faster this time? Maybe make it feel smaller with a blanket over the top or a smaller bed area within? (apologies if I've got this completely wrong or you've done these things already).
 
One of the biggest triggers for seperation issues is not having a routine when your are in the house with her, i.e her in the kitchen and you in the living room, if now everytime you are in and she is able to access every room you are in then this could also be part of the problem, I have a dog in now with very bad seperation issues, so much so Im taclking it without a crate to begin with (not the norm for me) and I am now sitting in the living room and he is in the kitchen on a bed, he keeps coming to the sitting room door and twiddling the handle and I tell him firmly "bed" without getting up and going to the door and he is indeed going back to his bed, and when Im going into the kitchen I am completely blanking him doing what I need to do and coming back into the sitting room, even though he makes a bee line for me, he needs to get used to the fact that he does not always get to sit in the same room as me or follow me around the house, im also confusing him by going into the conservatorey and going through the back door into the kitchen then back into the living room, this way he is rather confused and cannot work out where I am, eventually tomorrow I will leave him in on his own this way and go out of the house using a door he cannot see me leave from and re enter through another:rolleyes: so basically im confusing him and not allowing him to keep tracks on me.


Does she sleep in her bed/crate at night ok?
 
CAYLA said:
One of the biggest triggers for seperation issues is not having a routine when your are in the house with her, i.e her in the kitchen and you in the living room, if now everytime you are in and she is able to access every room you are in then this could also be part of the problem, I have a dog in now with very bad seperation issues, so much so Im taclking it without a crate to begin with (not the norm for me) and I am now sitting in the living room and he is in the kitchen on a bed, he keeps coming to the sitting room door and twiddling the handle and I tell him firmly "bed" without getting up and going to the door and he is indeed going back to his bed, and when Im going into the kitchen I am completely blanking him doing what I need to do and coming back into the sitting room, even though he makes a bee line for me, he needs to get used to the fact that he does not always get to sit in the same room as me or follow me around the house, im also confusing him by going into the conservatorey and going through the back door into the kitchen then back into the living room, this way he is rather confused and cannot work out where I am, eventually tomorrow I will leave him in on his own this way and go out of the house using a door he cannot see me leave from and re enter through another:rolleyes: so basically im confusing him and not allowing him to keep tracks on me.


Does she sleep in her bed/crate at night ok?
Click to expand...
Also you say she howled when you closed the backk door, could she see you leaving or did she hear it?
 
Please excuse typos and short replies, still getting to grips with iPhone :o

Yep she had a new crate last week, but she was happy in it for several days before the problems started? Same bed inside, same blanket over the top, just a size bigger. Is it just a delayed reaction to the bigger space, maybe?

Cayla, she can't see the back door, only the front, and I am often to be found leaving through one and mysteriously coming straight back through the other :p

I enforce time every day, after walks, where she goes in the crate for time while I shower, clean etc., we're over 3 floors so I'm out of sight a lot of this time. The rest of the time I discourage her from following me around the house - there's a stairgate and bolts on the upstairs doors so I can sit in the study and ignore her for an hour.

She sleeps in the crate but often still whines shortly after the lights and telly go off, thinking she's now alone, but I tell her to shush (from top of stairs, out of sight) and she settles down until about 7am when the same happens again.

Many thanks all for ideas so far :) I know it will take time but I've been extraordinarily patient :p
 
Don't tempt me, guys, seriously, I'm sure it's better not to get another one while the current one has unsolved ishoos. :p

It's definitely on the cards if I can move next summer and get something with a decent garden, the second I do I'll be shrieking at you all to find me a dog (remember, 6-24 month neutered male GSD, short coat, black for preference ;)).

I've just spent an hour cursing at the webcam and have managed to set it up so I can watch her from upstairs or record video and sound while I'm out, be interesting to see exactly what she gets up to.
 
Well, she didn't howl for the first three minutes, then abandoned her still-full kong and howled intermittently for the next fourteen. She's not in full-blown panic mode, just standing up and lying down inbetween bouts of yowling. :(

I am now sat at the bottom of the kitchen stairs, being as quiet as I can, slamming the back door every five minutes to pretend I've gone out and shushing any whines I hear inbetween. I've been doing this for half an hour. I have officially gone mad. :eek:
 
It does make me laugh the things we do for our dogs! I even got to the stage of revving up the car outside / driving round the block a few times before I actually left to fool Oscar when he was in his delinquent phase.
 
I suppose I'm quite lucky in that regard, we don't have a driveway so the sound of the car isn't a trigger for her. Just seems to be the back door at the moment, wonder if I can rig up some way of slamming it at a distance, my back is starting to go on these bloody wooden stairs... :o
 
So is it only the door that triggers her?

I have ordered my seperationer:rolleyes: onto his bed which is working, I have put him in my doggy room, he yowled for 10 mins before I went in opened door and firmly demanded "bed now" he went straight to it and I watched through the window and he stayed there, I msut say if I do have a bad one I do open the door very quickly tell them firmly to get to "bed" then close it rather than the sit and listen to them scream, even though I have no neighbours I wont have them screaming, firmness sometimes has to come into it, he is also ignoring his bone (they do tend to when they are busy stressing) I made the mistake of leaving him in my kitchen yesterday and he ate a pair of shoes I had bought the day before:eek::mad: so I bought a new pair last night and now he is in the doggy room when I leave with radio on, or indeed now whilst im cleaning the house he is in the doggy room with a toilet break until he gets his walks and his next one is not due till 6, then he is back in there, I will do this until he is completely settled before allowing him in a room im in, he has obs been given up for this reason, he is a 12 months old X pointer.
 
I actually don't think it's the door specifically - earlier she didn't start howling until a good three minutes after I'd slammed the door and left and she doesn't react to the door opening and closing normally, only when it's followed by a significant period of silence (i.e me not being there).

She's just terrified of that moment when she realises that she's alone. It's the same when she goes in the crate at night, she's fine when we're upstairs making noise and watching tv but as soon as everything's silent she thinks she's alone and whimpers a bit. I shout at her from the top of the stairs and she shuts up for the night.

Given that she's crated apart from us at night, how many hours during the day should I be aiming to have her in another room do you think? It's about three hours at the moment. She has free access to the living room the rest of the time, though she often takes herself into the kitchen or up on the landing away from us in that time too. :confused:

You have my sympathy re: shoes, I haven't lost a shoe yet but have sacrificed several blocks of cheese, two 2-litre bottles of milk (and wasn't it fun cleaning that from under the kitchen units before it smelled), the sleeve of a Berghaus jacket and a £60 vet visit from when I left her uncrated and she ate a packet of raisin cereal. :o
 
Bloody nora (at all those things she has eaten):eek::D
obs it's harder because she is your pet, I literally has left the pointer in the doggy room all day except to exercise him then straight back in, I want him to get used to being alobe before bonding with me, then I will only allow a short period with me and no contact or affection will be given and I may even crate him in the living room, sometime if I have really bad cases, I crate them in which ever room im in, so they can spend time with me but in the crate, so they dont jsut associate being in it with me being gone, I will also have a crate in the kitchen and put the dog in there when im in there and basically lots of exercise inbetween, I assume you have a tv/radio on in the kitchen.

Huskys can be very stressy with the seperation issues, I girl who I visited a few months back was living in the house 24/7 with her husky whislt her boyfriend went out for supplies and took sickie from work for 6 weeks:eek: because they got to the point they could not leave her, it was very extreme so we tried crate in kitchen, living room and bedroom, and it worked, she was literally walk, crate, walk, crate, she can now be left in her crate when they go out and does not make a peep.
 
Reading this I am so so glad I got a baby husky.She whined in the crate for the first few weeks, which I just told her off for and then ignored her till she shut up, but now she takes herself to bed there when she is tired and you don't hear a peep out of her until I get up in the morning.

I'm sure Dax will settle, I don't have any advice, but all I can say is I have been and still am v strict with mini husky. I'll love her occasionally, but most of the day she is following orders and commands as we are establishing permanent ground rules atm.:)
 
I feel your pain :(
I had the same problems with my Lurcher who is now 2 1/2 and pretty much cured, fingers crossed. We have neighbours and they did comment on his howling, despite the fact we have put up with their spaniel howling when left but hey how do you say well yours does it too, sounds like tic for tat. We crated Boris from day 1 as I was scared he would rip the place up but despite buying the biggest crate he soon grew so big, he could just stand and turn in it and I felt cruel leaving him in it for any length of time. We bought the DAP difuser, spent ages leaving the room, house, street, creeping up from behind the house to listen etc etc. We even taped him and still do sometimes. Our breakthrough was him being ill, we slept downstairs for a couple of nights and left his crate door open. He seemed happier with the door open. The next step was getting rid of the crate, I was so pleased about this as our house isnt big and it took up half of my open plan dining room. He cried for his 'house' when we finally got rid of it, so it proves they do like them. Anyway crate gone we continued leaving him for 10 mins etc and listenned to the tape each time and eventually he was silent. I think a lot of our problems was he doesnt need to be left a lot so we have to keep making the effort to leave him every so often. I still dont think he'd do hours but we can go out for about 3 hours and touch wood hes ok.
I dont know whether he just 'grew up' or what but something just clicked. We had started to resent him, thats awful I know but I felt chained to the house, even food shopping was an ordeal and we considered getting another dog to keep him company. We leave him with a Kong, tell him to get in his bed and just leave. My sanity was kept courtesy of Cayla who helped me every step of the way.
Thanks :D:D
And good luck :):)
 
Louby said:
My sanity was kept courtesy of Cayla who helped me every step of the way.
Click to expand...

Three cheers for Cayla. :D

I also have the problem that I don't actually need to leave her often, I'm here all day at the moment and end up doing lots of trips to the shops to buy smoothies and magazines that I neither want nor need just to find an excuse to leave her alone for 20 minutes. :o

I'm beginning to wonder if this was all actually a blip caused by the new crate as I've now accumulated a couple of hours of footage of her sleeping - actually sleeping :eek: - when left alone and since the two episodes at the start of the week she hasn't howled again. Gold star to Katie, methinks!
 
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