As the old saying goes ‘prevention is better than the cure’ and how true this is when it comes to teaching resilience in dogs. It is important that as soon as we get our new puppy we carefully and gradually begin to teach them to cope happily on their own for a few minutes every day and build this up slowly.  We can use a crate or we can simply shut the door for a few seconds whilst puppy is busy trying to get food out of a small Kong or other puzzle toy. If we make being left fun rather than causing them to panic, we are teaching a really good resilience lesson. 

However, it may only take one traumatic experience to tip a dog over its threshold to cope and we find out through our neighbours complaining about the barking or by seeing the mess on our return that our dog is struggling with life. So, what do we do? Well firstly it is important that we rule out any underlying health conditions since a change in a dog’s behaviour can be an indication that something is amiss. Our vet may then refer us to a suitably qualified clinical companion animal behaviourist. Unfortunately, the field of animal training and behaviour is unregulated and anyone can set up a business with little or no qualifications or experience. It is important that we find out how well qualified our behaviourist is before trusting them with our pet’s mental wellbeing.  

The clinical behaviourist will make contact and may even send a questionnaire to fill in. This will give them lots of important information they will need to help understand how a dog is feeling and what they can do to help.  They may also ask for some video footage of how the dog behaves when left. A meeting will be arranged possibly via a remote consultation, where they will spend a number of hours getting to know all about our concerns, our dogs and our relationships with them and design a bespoke behavioural modification programme for us to follow. Follow ups are usually included and a full report is written and sent to us and the referring vet. It is important that the vet and behaviourist work as a team and we are prepared for a long journey. Costs maybe covered by pet insurance but check the small print and be prepared to pay an excess fee. 

Meanwhile there are a number of things we can do whilst awaiting our consultation that will reduce the distress our dogs are feeling when left. The most important one is not to leave them to feel this way. This of course is easier said than done and we may have to call in favours from our friends and family members or ask our boss if we can bring our best friend to work. There are also a number of dog walkers and day care centres that offer this service. 

We can then begin to work on systematically de-sensitising (baby steps) and counter conditioning (having fun) our dog to being left when we are at home by offering something exciting and enjoyable to be getting on with as we take a few tentative steps towards an internal door. This can be a scattering of food around the room or placed into a puzzle toy or a hidden ball whatever our dog loves best. We can add a word that will come to mean you are leaving but coming back and I like to use ’bye then’. After 2-3 steps towards the door we turn around and come back in as if this were the most normal thing in the world and get on with what we were doing. This is repeated over several days until our dog is so used to this routine, they don’t bat an eyelid and then we take a few more steps towards the door and repeat. Once we can get to the door, we can rattle the handle a bit and come back in and once our dog is happy with this, we can take a step through the door. If at any point our dog looks up and comes rushing over, we go back a few stages and begin at a stage they can cope with. As we get through the door, we can begin to close the door a few centimeters at a time until we can shut it and come straight back in. As our dogs get used to us leaving, we can leave for a little longer and a little longer, remember baby steps. By now we should well and truly be under the care of our vet and behaviourist. 

Anxiety when left is often multifactorial and needs careful diagnosis. Promised quick fixes such as bark collars that emit a shock or a spray of citronella rarely work for long and can be damaging for the long-term mental well-being for our dog. In some cases, our dog’s anxiety may generalise to other fears and phobia’s such as reacting to sudden loud noise or they may become less tolerant to being touched and may go to bite. Let’s not be tempted to consult the oracle that is Google as this often leads to conflicting and damaging advice. Any sudden change in our dog’s behaviour should always begin with a visit to the vet.