My Rescue Dog Tries to Tear the Door Apart When I Leave
Question:
I recently rescued moose a 2-3 year old possibly Portuguese Sheepdog terrier mix. He is the sweetet, most wonderful, perfect dog. So why am I writing you right? Well he loves me so much and is so attached to me that if I leave him he tries to tear the doors and window apart to find me, I guess. Taking him back is not an option. I have made a commitment to him and I won’t abandon him like others have. I take him with me whenever I can, but there are time we have to leave him. We own a pharmacy and my office is at home, so I’m with him all the time. I can go out and mow the lawn and he’s fine because he can see me. He hasn’t been crate trained that I know of and I’m afraid he’d hurt himself if I put him in a crate when I leave. I need to resolve this before he destroys my house. I would appreciate any advise as soon as you can. Thanks
Brenda
ANSWER:
Brenda,
Sounds like Moose has true separation anxiety. Dealing with separation anxiety in dogs is difficult but not impossible patience is the key word.
Okay for starters, if you have a crate, great if not get one big enough for Moose to comfortably stand up in. Get a doggy bed for the crate so that he knows this is his special place. Get him used to the crate by putting treats and toys in letting him go in and out of the crate with the door open when you are home. When you leave, crate him with toys, a Kong filled with peanut butter to keep him busy (note I do not recommend leaving a dog alone with a raw bone, just in case they choke)
Before you leave crate him. Do not make a fuss about leaving, just leave.
When you come home ignore him for the first few minutes then pet him.
This will show Moose that when you leave it is no big deal and that you do come back.
You will have to work at this. Good luck
Hope this helps
Nancy
Outside of the dog world, Nancy has both a Bachelor of Social Work and Masters degree in Criminology, which led her to become a correctional social worker. For over 30 years, she has been a practicing social worker, working in Children’s Services and Corrections.
“In 2004, I decided to go to the IPDTA conference just to see what it was about. It was amazing, all these dog trainers talking about using operant conditioning,” exclaims Nancy. “I decided that I wanted to be part of that world. The amazing journey of becoming a positive dog trainer had begun. I am still on this new adventure and learning more every day. I did not realize there was so much information and theory to learn about canine behavior and emotions. My social work background has helped immensely as much of the theory I learned at university about human emotions applies aptly to dogs.”
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Hi Nancy,
I just read your reply to Brenda re: separation anxiety. I gave a foster dog right now who also suffers from anxiety. Unfortunately, I do not work at home & must go out at least to work. He is fed in his crate etc but simply locking him in is not an option at this point. He has actually chewed enough wires off to get his head & paws out- this was in the first maybe 6 minutes? (I stopped him at that point due to safety) what else would you suggest? He has eaten the door frame(now covered partially by steel) the door(now covered by 1/4″ plexiglass and has now started on the (blacked out) windows. ANY help would be appreciated!
Isolation can be stressful for dogs under the best of circumstances, but a dog with true separation anxiety is pretty much having a full-on panic attack whenever they’re left alone. Nancy’s advice is certainly valid insofar as its good to give the dog stuff to do to take their mind off their isolation, but I think this advice is probably more appropriate for prevention, or dealing with very mild sep anx. Once you’ve got a dog literally trying to rip his way out of the house, you’ve got a serious problem, and crating him with a Kong and hoping for the best probably isn’t going to be a viable solution. These dogs need a carefully structured program of systematic desensitization and counter-conditioning to help them learn that being alone for a while is OK. I’m not a professional trainer, so I won’t attempt to lay out a detailed treatment protocol here, but there’s lots of good info out there. There’s a ton of good books available from Dogwise (http://www.dogwise.com). The book my local Humane Society reccomends for all their potential sep anx adoptions is Patricia McConnell’s “I’ll Be Home Soon! – How to Prevent and treat Separation Anxiety” (http://www.dogwise.com/ItemDetails.cfm?ID=DTB667). Depending on the severity of the problem, it might be a good idea to retain the services of a professional animal behaviorist. The use of psychotropic medication may also be called for, especially if periods of isolation are absolutely unavoidable during the course of treatment, but you’d want to discuss that with a behaviorist and your vet.
One thing I do know about treating sep anx is that it’s really important to try and prevent attacks while your treating it. Ideally this means managing the situation so that the Scary Stimulus (being home alone) is never presented at a level beyond what the dog can handle at the current point in treatment. If you’re halfway through treatment, and you’ve got to leave the dog for the whole day casing a full-blown sep anx attack, there is a real risk of regression back to square one, although you may be able to mitigate this with meds. This doesn’t mean you never leave the dog alone during treatment, indeed leaving them alone for carefully managed intervals is an integral part of the process, but if your only to the stage where you’re leaving for 30 minutes at a time, and you take off for six hours, don’t expect good things to come of it!
Brenda, in your case you’ve got the advantage of being home most of the time, so perhaps you could make a few lifestyle changes/sacrifices in the short term so the dog is never pushed too far during treatment? It’s not that you’ll never be able to leave him alone, but once you start treatment, you never want to leave for longer than your dog can handle. Dog sitters/doggy daycare may also be an option.
Jenna, you don’t work from home, so your management options during treatment are a lot more limited and your problem sounds quite severe. You indicated that the dog in question is a foster, so I’m assuming your affiliated with some sort of rescue organization. The first thing I’d do is talk to them about it. Maybe they have a behaviorist they work with for “problem” dogs. Regardless, given that you’ve got to go to work, its going to be tricky – meds might be called for here, but you’d have to talk to a behaviorist and vet about that. If you are affiliated with a foster-home-based rescue outfit, another option that is probably worthy of serious consideration is to find a more appropriate foster home. It’s truly commendable that you want to foster dogs, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t, but your home might not be the best choice for serious sep anx cases.
Hey, I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I like what you have to say. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.
that’s true isolation can be stressful for dogs under the best of circumstances, but a dog with true separation anxiety is pretty much having a full-on panic attack whenever they’re left alone..