During the times that we’re in, we’re all spending a lot of time at home with our pets, whether it’s working from home, having the kids off school or yeno, not actually being able to go anywhere. But our pets are feeling the effects of this. We love them and we want to spend time with them right? But what we don’t remember to do is let them have their own time and learn that being on their own and having their own independence is incredibly healthy and beneficial for them (and you). We’ve started to hear people worrying about what they're going to do when normality is back, or when they go away on holidays, so we want to give you a few tips and tricks that you can start implementing into your daily routine if your dog has separation anxiety!

The first thing to do when your pet has separation anxiety, is to never ever punish them. Anxiety in pets is the exact same as anxiety in humans, imagine shouting at your friend or family member for having a panic attack? If your pet is one of those that likes to destroy things or pee or poop while you’re away, coming home and shouting at them is just going to add fire to the flame of being anxious while you’re away. When a dog does something wrong, we all know action needs to be taken immediately after so they can understand not to do that thing again. By coming home hours later after they destroy something and being upset with them, they have no idea why.

We’ve got that part down, great! Now, how to go about reducing the amount of anxiety your pet has or what to do to prevent stressful situations for them. Firstly, make sure to crate train from the day you get them. Crate training is an amazing tool to use to help your pet gain independence and to keep themselves out of trouble or stressful situations at night or while you’re out of the house. 

What you can do is expose your pet a lot more often to your routine when leaving the house, but then don’t actually leave the house. So when you unlock the front door your dogs ears perk up right? They run over and they’re begging you not to leave with those puppy dog eyes? Well then don’t! You need to desensitise your dog to whatever they are anxious about. 

Maybe next you can get your keys and unlock and lock the door again and go back to doing whatever you were before again. Don’t speak or try to settle your dog down (don’t do this anyway when you’re actually going to leave) maybe you can put them in their crate with a bone or lickimat, lock it and then go back to work or sit outside their crate for 5 minutes and let them back out again. Doing this everyday can help reduce the anxiety associated with you leaving the house. It may be painful at first but give it time. Dogs are fabulous at recognising patterns so you’ve got to mix it up and confuse them and eventually you’ll start to see the problem work itself out. 

If your dog is an extreme case, we would recommend you to pay a visit to your vets and see if they can help you with medication or a carefully monitored plan to help resolve the issue. Have a look into CBD and the positive effects it has on your pup. It may be suited to help your pup in certain situations!

We all love our pets so much and we hate to see them uncomfortable or confused but all of these things can be resolved! If you want more information, we recommend reading ‘Separation Anxiety in Dogs’ by Malena DeMartini-Price. She also has a great website with resources.