Suspending Absences: Separation Anxiety Success from the Start
Separation Anxiety, or separation related behavior challenges, are expected to affect more than 35 million dogs in the US alone. These behaviors and the emotions that come with can be very challenging to modify. However, there are a number of things you can do to help your dog recover and one of the most important is to suspend absences during training.
Suspending absences is a form of management, management in dog training is any intervention that stops or prevents the problem/undesirable behavior from occurring. This is the first step to any ethical and responsible behavior modification plan. Some other examples of management might be; using gates or leashes to prevent your dog from jumping on guests, putting shoes away to prevent them being chewed by a new puppy, closing curtians/blinds to prevent problem barking out of windows. These management steps prevent the undesirable behaviors from being rehearsed so that your dog doesn’t practice them over and over while training is taking place.
In separation anxiety, when you leave your dog alone, even for a short period of time, it can trigger their fear, distress and panic and they rehearse the behaviors surrounding that such as vocalizing, pacing, destruction and more. The more opportunities your dog has to be in this state of panic and learning that being alone is a negative experience, the stronger that negative association becomes and the more challenging it can be to undo with behavior modification.
If you want to help your dog overcome their separation anxiety, it's important to prevent them from experiencing these negative emotions in the first place. This means suspending all absences (not leaving them alone), except for training sessions, until your dog has made significant progress and their emotional state is changing from panic and distress to neutral.
There are a number of benefits to suspending absences during separation anxiety training. First, it helps to keep your dog’s baseline anxiety levels lower. When they're not being left alone, they don't have the opportunity to learn that being alone is a negative experience.
Second, suspending absences gives you the opportunity to work on gradual desensitization training exercises that can start to help them correlate alone time with safety. For example, rather than being glued to your side when you walk to the door, they learn to relax on the couch while you exit for a few seconds. This will help them learn that being alone is not a scary thing as you are exposing them only to alone time they can handle.
Third, suspending absences will help to build your dog's trust in you. Think of suspending absences as deposits in a trust account. The more deposits you build up, the easier it will be to ask for more challenges during training, taking small withdrawals asking for bits of alone time during predictable training exercises.
If you're struggling to help your dog with separation anxiety, suspending absences is a great place to start. It's an extremely effective way to help your dog reduce their baseline starting anxiety to make progress with training. If you are attempting training while not suspending absences you will likely move a lot slower as your dog as no way to predict which absences are safe and which might result in fear, panic and distress.
Here are some tips for suspending absences during separation anxiety training:
Ask family and friends: Make a shared calendar of times and days you need help and let everyone pitch in when they can!
Swap Pet Care: If your pup has doggie friends, offer to swap pet sitting duties
Hire qualified Pet Care: Pet sitters, dog walkers, dog Trainers, dog day care, boarding (be sure all are aware of your dogs needs and they will not be alone in the care of others)
Post for help on local community message boards: NextDoor, coffee shops, senior centers, college job boards, local parent groups
Bring your dog to work, on errands or work from home when you can
If you're struggling to suspend absences on your own, you may want to seek professional help from a certified separation anxiety trainer or vet behaviorist. We can help you create a customized training plan for your dog and provide you with support and guidance throughout the process.
Melissa Dallier is a Certified Separation Anxiety Trainer working with dogs and puppies to help achieve safe and predictable alone time. She lives in Roswell, GA with her husband and 2 dogs, one whom is recovered from separation anxiety thanks to gradual desensitization training and a lot of suspending absences!