When you’re away: helping your pet deal with separation anxiety

Summer travel sometimes means leaving Fido or Fluffy with a pet sitter or at a friendly boarding facility. But what can you do if your pet can’t stand to be away from you as little as an hour, much less a weekend or more? Pet Seperation Anxiety is a psychological term to describe the stress and anxiousness in a pet brought on by the leaving of their beloved owner. It can cause your pet to urinate, defecate, bark, howl, chew, dig or try to escape. Although these behaviors can have many causes, Pet Separation Anxiety is characterized by problematic behaviors that occur when your pet is left alone.

What’s more, the ASPCA states that, “Escape attempts by dogs with separation anxiety are often extreme and can result in self-injury and household destruction.” The good news is that there’s a gentle, progressive way to help your pet cope.

Desensitization is a basic, effective technique of dealing with Pet Separation Anxiety. The goal is to help your pet find a way to decouple his panic response caused by your departure. In addition, you’ll have to learn how to alter your own behaviors to enable this growth. This is not something that can be done in one afternoon. It requires a bit of time, patience and training for the both of you. Follow these basic steps:

1. Go through the activities of getting ready—putting on your coat, packing your bag and grabbing your keys—and then sit down with Fido and don’t leave. Simply hang out with him until he is calm and comfortable again and then continue about your day.

2. When Fido has stopped panicking, get ready to leave, walk outside and then immediately come back inside the house.

3. As your pet becomes more and more comfortable with you leaving the house, you will be able to close the door before coming back in. Then, you’ll be able to spend longer and longer amounts of time outside the closed door. Practicing these short absences multiple times throughout the day will help improve your pet’s separation anxiety—especially if you try to only leave the house once Fido has relaxed.

4. Once your pet has accepted that you really do come back after you leave, he should start to become comfortable with you going out for longer and longer periods. It may take a while, but eventually you should be able to leave him for a few hours or more at a time.

Counter-conditioning is another approach which focuses on developing an association for your pet between being left alone and good things, like delicious food. Every time you leave the house, offer your pet a treat or chew toy like a KONG® stuffed with food that will take him at least 20 to 30 minutes to finish. Be sure to remove the toy when you return home so that he only has access to it and the yummy food inside when you’re away. This approach works best for mild cases of separation anxiety because highly-anxious pets usually won’t eat when their guardians aren’t home.

Remember that Pet Separation Anxiety is not malicious behavior that needs to be punished. It is a health issue, just like depression or panic attacks in humans, which can only be dealt with through patience and treatment.

One final thing to keep in mind is that your behavior can contribute to the problem of your pet’s separation anxiety. Although you might be sad to leave your dog to go to work or really happy to see him when you come home again, try to avoid making leaving and coming home into a big deal. Instead, when you come home, walk in, grab a glass of water, put your bag down, and then, once Fido is calm and relaxed, call him over for some gentle attention. You’ll still love each other just as much five minutes later, and it will be a healthy, happy kind of love.