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counter conditioning, desensitization, dog training, patricia mcconnell, positive reinforcement, separation anxiety
I’ve had a recent surge in contacts regarding separation anxiety (SA). If you’ve followed me for a long time you probably remember my post on SA in my personal blog. Warning: my personal blog is personal for a reason. If you’re easily offended, I would skip it if I were you. In that blog, I covered what the disorder is and what it isn’t, and in this post I will hit on some basics for treatment. If you believe your dog is experiencing SA please find a qualified professional to help you.
What is Separation Anxiety? The briefest way for me to describe this disorder is this: it’s an anxiety disorder centered on departures/being alone. What happens is the dog experiences an anxiety attack (if you’ve ever had one yourself, you can sympathize with these poor animals–if you haven’t, just count yourself lucky) when he is left alone. After a few of these (or just one) the dog begins to experience anxiety surrounding departures and triggered by departure cues because he is anticipating the horrendous anxiety attack he experiences once left alone. It’s a vicious cycle because the actual event that caused the first few anxiety attacks (being left) is no longer even relevant because the dog’s anxiety is building long before that happens.
First, identify your dog’s “triggers.â€Â  As mentioned above, dogs with SA begin to experience anxiety surrounding departure cues. These departure cues are referred to as “triggers†and the first stage of treatment is identifying all triggers. You must become an avid student of your dog’s behavior and figure out what the specific triggers are that begin the spiral of anxiety that starts with involuntary stress signals and escalates into life-threatening destructive acts. If your dog has SA, at one point every morning he is calm, and at some point he begins to panic because he knows you are leaving. It is up to you to identify what that point is. Some sample triggers are:
- Owner’s alarm goes off (if you don’t use an alarm on days when you stick around, this can be the first trigger–unfortunate because it is how the day begins).
- Owner puts on makeup
- Owner puts on shoes
- Owner picks up keys
- Owner puts on jacket
- Owner puts coffee into travel cup
- Owner loads car
Now that you’ve identified possible triggers for your dog, list them out in order so that you aware of the order of operations. Each trigger causes more anxiety than the trigger before it, so it is important that we list and rank these triggers.
Then, randomly desensitize your dog to his triggers. That means repeating the triggers at random times throughout the day when you have no intention of leaving. If your dog’s first trigger is when your alarm goes off, set your alarm to go off multiple times a day. If it is you picking up your keys, pick them up and put them down all day long.  Get the point?
Finally, plan a system for counter-conditioning your dog’s triggers. That means giving your dog something amazing (raw marrow bone, hollow bone stuffed with liverwurst, Kong stuffed with crack chicken*, it has to be AMAZING), waiting for him to get really into it, then engaging a trigger. Then take away the good stuff and wait a few minutes before repeating the whole scenario again. Practice this with all triggers until the triggers become less and less anxiety-inducing and more and more pleasant.
The bad news is that while you go about this process you need to keep your dog somewhere else where he doesn’t experience anxiety while you have to be away. This means hiring a dog sitter, taking him to daycare or a boarding kennel, or taking him with you while you modify how he feels about being alone. If you go through the process of treating his disorder while simultaneously leaving him alone every day, causing anxiety attacks, your progress will be slowed dramatically.
The good news is that SA can be treated successfully. Most dogs can learn how to hang out alone if the treatment is done correctly.
Tags apdt, choosing a dog trainer, clicker training, cpdt-ka, dog behavior, dog trainer, how to pick a dog trainer, iacp, karen pryor, patricia mcconnell, separation anxiety It’s pretty great that this is a topic of discussion at all. More and more dog owners are deciding to bring a professional into their lives; and some are even choosing to do so before there is a problem (rejoice!). I wish the days of deciding whether or not to have a dog trainer at all were irrevocably “over,†but they are not. So, for discussion’s sake, let’s just say that if you’re reading this blog you have or want to have a dog trainer in your life. If you’ve browsed the dog shelf at the book store or tried searching the internet you’ve undoubtedly noticed that there’s a confusing mess of information out there regarding dog training, and it really is not surprising that so many people wind up dissatisfied with their choice. The following list is what I hope you use to guide your decision. There you have it. Of course, I could write a whole book on this topic alone, but this should get you started. What about you? How did you pick your trainer, and were you happy?Â
Credentials. Yeah, all professionals should have them, but you’d be amazed at how rarely I am asked about mine. There are currently no laws or regulations governing this field, so you have to do your homework when you are picking a dog trainer. Specifically, your chosen professional should hold a legitimate certification (like those offered by the CCPDT or the IAABC, for example), and should be able to tell you about the last continuing education seminar he/she attended.  Your dog trainer should be a member of a dog training association, like the APDT, as well. As a sidenote on this whole membership and certification thing, if I were you I would look into the organizations your prospective trainer is associated with. Just being associated with something doesn’t mean much, and if your trainer is associated with two organizations that have pretty different mission statements (for example, if your trainer is both a member of the APDT and the IACP), then you need to dig deeper to find out which kind of training this person actually endorses.Â
Experience.  The only way to know what kind of experience a dog trainer has is to ask. Notice I said what kind and not how much. I am asked about this more often than about my credentials, but still not often enough. The tricky thing here is that “X number of years†is not necessarily a good answer, and more questions are warranted if that is the kind of answer you receive. For instance, a dog trainer who has been working in the field for more than 10 years is much more likely to have an “old-school†approach to training than one who was certified in the past 5. The longer a person has been training dogs, the more likely that person is to have used aversive or even abusive methods. If a person has been training dogs for decades then you should expect that she has changed what she is doing significantly since the beginning of her career. A better question than “how long have you been training?†is “where/how did you learn to train dogs?â€Â There are no hard and fast rules regarding what is a good answer and what isn’t, so use your judgement and check on the rest of the things in this bullet list.
Influences. This might be a tricky question, but I encourage you to ask your potential dog trainer who her biggest influence is. Then I encourage you to Google (or Bing, or whatever) that name and read up. Patricia McConnell and Karen Pryor are both great answers, but they are totally different answers. If the influence rhymes with Schmezar Schmillan, look elsewhere.
Equipment. This is pretty telling. Ask a trainer what equipment she uses, and ask for specific examples if she says “every dog is different†or any other non-commital answer like that. Front connection harness, head halter, clicker, and food are all good answers. Flat buckle collar is a good answer too. If I were you I would avoid trainers that use choke, prong, or electronic collars. There’s just no place for that garbage anymore.   Â
The trainer’s own dogs.  Ask about them. Meet them, if you can. I have met trainers who didn’t have dogs of their own, and I have to say that freaked me out. In between dogs, I understand, if the person is actively seeking a new furry friend. But no dogs at all? RED FLAG! If the trainer seems reluctant to talk about her own dogs, that might be a red flag as well. A great specific question to ask is “what kind of behavior issues have you faced with your own dogs?â€Â Any trainer who tells you her dogs have no problems is lying, and I personally think we learn more from our own dogs than from any other. A person who has lived with, loved, and healed a dog with a serious problem will be able to bring much more compassion and wisdom to the table than a trainer who hasn’t, period.
And the question that isn’t as relevant as you might think: Have you worked with my breed? Working with a variety of breeds is a great thing to have under your belt, but a better question to ask is whether or not the trainer has successfully helped a dog with the same issue yours has. If you have a Shiba Inu with separation anxiety go for the trainer with the experience in separation anxiety, not the one that has experience with Shibas.
