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Dog Behavior Article
Brief Tip & Review: Separation Anxiety Treatment Program
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Goals of the Separation Anxiety Treatment Program
The chief goal in treating separation anxiety is to reduce the dog's anxiety response through counter-conditioning. The idea is to make the dog see that his family's leaving is no longer purely a bad thing. At the least, we want the dog to view being left alone as a mixture of both positive and negative experiences. At best, being left alone would be seen as positive and fun.
We also want to eliminate accidental reinforcements for the dog's anxiety states and adjust exercise schedules, nutrition intake and medication levels to reduce the dog's anxiety.
We often ask owners to keep departures low key in order not to leave the dog in a hyped-up state. Arrivals also are kept low key -- no lavishing of praise or petting upon entrance -- to prevent the dog from feeling anticipation anxiety.
We begin to desensitize the dog to the customary cues that its family is getting ready to leave by having the people act out the cues and then not go anywhere, but rather play ball, give treats or go out the door and immediately back in again. Then we have the family vary its time away so the dog is not left for a full day every time the family gets ready to leave the home.
We make sure the dog is getting sufficient attention and exercise to avoid unnecessary isolation from its pack. We make sure the dog is sleeping inside at night with the family. We have the owner work with the dog on some gentle obedience exercises to channel excess energy.
We reduce the extreme contrasts of attention. Many dogs suffering from separation anxiety get an overload of attention when the owner is home -- constant petting, exercising and roughhousing. This sets them up for major withdrawal symptoms when the next morning or Monday comes and the owner is suddenly gone for 10 hours. The extremes of non-stop attention and no attention are just too much for some dogs to handle. We moderate the extremes to help the dogs obtain a happy medium.
Of course, a cornerstone of the treatment is reconditioning the dog to look at being left alone as something positive. It involves giving the dog some irresistible food items, prepared to sustain prolonged attention, and only giving them to the dog when the owner leaves. Although the dog will sense some anxiety that the owner is leaving, it begins to realize that owner departures are the only times it gets these super treats. The dog, we hope, will gradually make more positive associations with its owner's departure than negative ones.
But even all these techniques don't guarantee success for the dog that is suffering from severe separation anxiety. Some dog's bottom line is needing to be around a family member most of the time -- something not always possible. So curing this problem is an iffy prospect. One thing is certain, however: Merely looking at the surface symptoms of separation anxiety, such as nuisance barking and chewing destruction, and focusing on these with heavy-handed punishment techniques will only make the problem worse.
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