Our eldest male Husky has the weirdest case of separation anxiety. He seems to be okay with me leaving, but it isn’t okay when I bring one of the other two dogs with me. He is a whiner. A WHINER!
I’ve read about dogs getting all worked up when their owner is getting ready to leave. Just Google “correcting separation anxiety in dogs” and you’ll get a ton of sites giving you all the possibilities why anxious dogs do what they do. I have yet to find the proper query to get a solution to my concern though.
Most articles will help you figure out what you are doing to cause all the anxiety. But what do you do when your routine isn’t the cause of the problem? Here’s what goes down:
- Aldo, the dog in question, is the calmest among the three when it comes to putting his collar and leash on. That means he’s only calm when he is part of the walk.
- I try to walk them together as much as I can but there are too many vehicles in this area that it get’s impossible to walk continuously with two natural pullers who forget all that they’ve learned when a cat passes by.
- I take him out for a walk first before the others (when I don’t walk them together) so he gets tired by the time I need to walk the other two. But somehow, no matter how tired he is, he still has enough energy to sound like a never-ending siren when I prep Aluna (our other husky) for a walk.Â
- I wait for both Aluna and Aldo to calm down before I put Aluna’s collar and leash on. I also wait for the both of them to mellow down before we start walking to our gate.
- Once everything is quiet, I do not look back. I make Aluna sit while opening the gate. Within a few seconds you’ll get an alarm system that is Aldo’s whines.Â
- I let Aluna stay where we are and we wait for Aldo to calm down and quite frankly, to shut up. Let me tell you… it goes on FOREVER. Neighbors have been calling me out. I’m too ashamed to let them hear his cries because it sounds like I’m slaughtering him. Oh, if I had a recording, you would know exactly what I mean.
- I give him a good 30 minutes to cry it all out before we move out. Unfortunately, he does not stop. He may pause for a few seconds, but his cries are longer.Believe me.
- This is where my “let him cry it out” training eventually has to stop because I usually get in trouble with the neighbors. I don’t want them to ask authorities to get my eldest so we end up just closing the gate and going back inside. Poor Aluna never gets her own walk time not unless I take Aldo with us. That entails going out either very early in the morning or very late at night. No cars = easy walks.
Just me standing in front of our open gate = no reactionMe holding their leash while in front of our open gate = no reactionMe with Aluna in front of our open gate = batshit crazy freaking whines
With that said, I am going to try and tackle this in my own way. I may try a few things I’ve read and try to mix things up a bit. I hope the neighbors will tolerate his cries for the first few times (I bet they will be loud). If anyone who’s reading this is encountering the same problem, please let me know what you have done or what you are doing to correct this behavior. Also, if you can let Cesar Millan come to the Philippines and meet our dog, that would be awesome too. 
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