A Few Dog Separation Anxiety Solutions

 

Dogs are amazingly loyal friends. As their owner and caretaker, you don't want anything bad to happen to your dog. Unfortunately, wanting to treat your dogs well and often lead to inexperienced owners crossing the line and actually hurting their dog. Of course, we always want our dogs to love us and be affectionate toward us, but by coddling your dog too much you risk making them a victim of dog separation anxiety. Here are the causes, and a handful of dog separation anxiety solutions.

Symptoms of dog separation anxiety include changes in behavior, forming odd habits, changes in diet and several more. Essentially, it means that your dog is terrified to be left alone. This will often surface when you are near the dog by way of him or her needing to be extremely close to you at all times, barking or whining, or jumping up on you. When you are not nearby, dogs will often exhibit behavior that is uncharacteristically aggressive and destructive, such as chewing on property and destroying furniture.

The reason this affects dogs as much as it does is that they are social animals. In the wild, dogs live in packs. When a dog spent enough time around the human, they often consider that human a member of their pack. Packs of dogs have an interesting hierarchical structure in which there is one dominant or alpha dog, and several followers. Alpha dogs fill an important role in the pack as they are responsible for the protection and safety of others. A dog usually considers their owner to be the head of their pack. This is healthy behavior. In fact, the first step of dog training is to establish yourself as the alpha in your household. Here are some other helpful dog separation anxiety solutions.

As the leader, it is your responsibility to make sure that your dog feels secure both in your presence and your absence. The first and most effective way to do this is to make sure that you provide your dog a space in your house that is all their own. By having a small, secure area where only your dog is allowed, you give them a place to go in which they feel totally secure even without you being there.

Another good tip is to do not only have the dog go to their special place when you are leaving the house, but also when you are there. This will allow your dog to see that you do not need to be directly next to them in order to feel secure. Also, it allows you to only spend a few minutes at a time apart rather than whole hours or days.