Some dogs have a really rough time when their owners leave home. They whine, they howl, they cry, they pee on the floor, they chew up the furniture. Last week I wrote for ScienceNOW about a study of what’s going on in their doggie heads. They found that the dogs with more separation anxiety were also more pessimistic. Read the story here.
The people who did the research have also studied how to treat separation anxiety. Part of the treatment is teaching dogs to be more self-reliant; you don’t let them rely on you for comfort, so they can work it out on their own if they hear a truck outside when you aren’t home.
And then part of it is to desensitive the dogs to cues they associate with the owner leaving. An animal behaviorist I talked to said one dog she’d worked with had figured out that when the owner was going out alone, she’d use a different lipstick than if she was going out to walk the dog, so the dog would freak out if the lipstick in the metal case came out. Dogs are smart.
photo: Emily Blackwell
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