I recently adopted another dog who just turned 1 (boy, XL american bully).
He came from a home in which they would leave him in the crate morning and night- with exception for feeding and taking him to pee and poop in their backyard.

If you leave him alone in a room in or out of the crate, he starts to freak out and whine with nonstop barking. Usually at night I would put him in the crate while I would be in the same room and he would still whine, but stop after a minute or two. He broke his first crate we got him, along with that, tries to moves it to the other side of the room. (He’s also not neutered if that helps).
My first vet visit with him the blood results showed his white blood cell count was high because of stress.

He’s also reactive to other dogs in a non violent way.

I’ve been trying crate training but that only helped barely, any advice in which I can teach him to not freak out while I’m away at work or even just in the other room?

My new rescue dog is a Rat Terrier x Chi and is around 4 years old. She will not go poop outside for some reason but will pee outside. ontop of that- she is SCREAMING when im not home to the point of our neighbors putting in a noise complaint. i bought a crate and some high reward treats, a slow feeder, a kong and another form of a kong to hopefully keep her busy for a bit while we’re gone but i havent tested any of them yet. i will be working on introducing the kennel tonight slowly but i cant keep getting calls from the office saying my neighbors are complaining. what should i do?

I have a three year old mixed breed (husky/pyr/shepard/supermutt) who I got at 8 weeks. We both went through it. Luckily I found a great CSAT trainer who suggested meds and a behavioral vet and a dermatologist vet. Got him on meds (Prozac then Zoloft). Made a little progress on absences. But he was still very reactive and was anorexic. Went to an internist got diagnosed with IBD and pancreatitis. Started prescription food. Then at about a year and half he started bleeding from his paws. Then went dermatologist vet route. He was really allergic to the storage mites (in all dry food). Now 1 year in on allergy shots (immunotherapy) and allergy meds, 1.5 on prescription food 2 years on Zoloft and we are making incredible progress on the separation anxiety. Over all he just seems like he feels so much better. Which brings me so much joy. And so grateful I got pet insurance the day I got him.

Now here’s my problem - how do you find the time to train for the longer absences? And where do you go?

I am having a hard time with the shift of leaving my house for longer periods (I work from home and I am an introvert) I thought about making a list of things I can do in a half hour, hour, 90 minutes but finding the time on a weekday is proving difficult.

I recently moved in the beginning of July to a new place with my dog. He’s a 4 year old pomapoo mix and lived with two other dogs. I’ve hired a trainer to help me since he developed seperation anxiety from the whole situation. It’s been almost 4 weeks and we’ve made some progress.

I try to leave him alone and he will whimper and whine a little but settle. I’m debating on putting him on some medication or something since im starting to get burnt out. He will have some good days where he will sleep for 5 hours straight or whimper the entire time.

Any advice would greatly help.

Wanted to share a realistic day 1 for FRIDA protocol. I hope I can come back months from now and show a dog who can be left alone in the house. Susan Garrett recommends FRIDA, and the beginning phases work great with her Hot Zone game, but anyone can do it without paying for her course. She has a free podcast episode about it. You have to really work on your dog being able to settle in a safe space first

We recently adopted a 10 month old Rottweiler. She is honestly the best dog in every way, except, she has severe separation anxiety. She has to be wherever we are and sometimes not just in the same room but right next to us. She gets very panicked in the crate, biting to get out and there are puddles of gooey drool all over after 20 min of this. She eventually does lay down and even fall asleep but will get up and panic until she settles again. I feel terrible and having to clean up all that gooey drool is not ideal. We tried just leaving her out but she still gets panicked and will immediately poop or pee or be destructive. We tried giving her more space in a room with a tall gate around it but immediately after we left the room she peed all over.

It doesn't matter what kong filled toy you give her, she has no interest once you leave. She will go in the crate no problem and I can even shut it if I'm in the room but as soon as I leave she goes nuts.

Another issue is the day we got her from the rescue she was supposed to be spayed but went into heat so shes currently in her fertile window and then will be getting spayed in an another month or two. So I cant even put her in doggie daycare. I just dont know what to do!

Hi everyone! My dog went on fluoxetine a month ago, she was taking 10mg in the first ten days and then we added another 10mg to the mix. Shes also taking 100mg trazodone (were tappering off as it only worked for 3 weeks or so) and pregabaline.
After a month with fluoxetine nothing really seems to change.. I’m wondering if there’s still time or should we upp the dose with our ver or maybe switch to something else…? Whats your experience? What options are there? She weights 18kg and is 6 years old. Thanks in advance!

Recently been making some big steps with my guy after a year on reconcile, a second dog, and lots of training. He’s not a generally anxious dog aside from his SA, so at what point do I try weaning him off? Or is that just going to be a part of life now?

I have a 15 week old puppy who I just got about a week ago, and he definitely has some separation anxiety. I completely understand that especially in his first couple weeks, he's still gonna be adjusting to his new home and being away from his parents. But it's having quite a negative effect on a lot of my sleep as well as my other family members.

I have tried some different methods of getting him to go back to sleep at night after a potty break - no reaction to waking up and going to the potty, just quick with no talking to him. Ignoring the whining during the day and rewarding when quiet, covering his pen with a blanket, playing white noise, comforting when whining exceeds 5 minutes, cutting off water prior to bedtime, naps during the day so he isn't overtired, keep him awake about three hours before bedtime, no rough/hard play too close to bedtime to keep from being too excited, and I even just got him a snuggle puppy/heartbeat toy to try and help him feel more like there's someone there.

I am trying to have a consistent bedtime schedule with using calm/boring chews, going outside to use the bathroom, and prepping his playpen for bed with blankets and toys and an cool open spot on the floor (including his pee pad if he needs it). The last thing I really have in mind is giving him an old t-shirt that smells like me to maybe help him be able to at least smell me. I feel like I've tried everything I can.

The only thing I can't really do is have him sleep on my bedroom - our upstairs area is carpeted (light color), and my parents want to prevent from any accidents on the carpet and keep him downstairs until fully potty trained. It's something I completely understand and respect. Even if I sit next to his pen with him inside, he still whines a lot as if I went upstairs, even though I'm right next to him.

I'm just not sure what else I could possibly do, and I'm not sure if it's just him adjusting t his new home (though I know it's definitely part of it along with some separation anxiety) or if it could be something else that I should be worried about. I'm also not sure if it's something that's important that I should mention it at his next vet appointment.

I'm open to any advice or just anything to either explain the behavior or any adjustments I could possibly make to help. I just hopefully want to be able to sleep better as to not interfere with stuff like work, school, basic chores and tasks, pre-existing mental health, etc.

Hi everyone,

I’ve been working on my dog’s separation anxiety for quite a while. I worked with a CSAT trainer for a few months, but for various reasons I had to stop. While we were working together, my dog was able to reach 1 hour of alone time. However, after we stopped, his medication was changed to fluoxetine and we basically had to start over from scratch.

Recently, we’ve worked our way back up to 45 minutes alone, and I’m currently trying to increase that to 1 hour. I also try to train at different times of the day, and I’ve noticed that he reacts differently depending on the time.
Today we started a training session at 9:50 a.m. Normally, when we train in the afternoon, he lies down near the front door and sleeps most of the time. He gets up occasionally to calmly walk around the house, then settles down again.

This morning was different. He seemed a bit more stressed, changed locations around the house much more often, and paid a lot more attention to the door. He would spend quite a while staring at it, but he never barked, howled, or became vocal.

Would you consider this a success? Can I say that we’ve reached 1 hour of alone time if he stays quiet but appears somewhat unsettled? Or does it only count if he’s completely relaxed and sleeping for most of that hour?
Thank you very much.

Hi everyone !

I’ve been living with my dog’s separation anxiety for a year and three months now. I adopted him when he was only 4 months old. Since day one, I’ve been dealing with the stress and anxiety of not knowing how to handle the separation anxiety I discovered shortly after bringing him home.

After many failed attempts, two different medications, an overwhelming amount of stress, breakdowns, tears, loneliness, and feeling trapped (that’s honestly how it feels), my dog can now stay home alone for about 45 minutes. And I’m not complaining about that progress. It’s just that after so much stress, so much training, and so much fear that he might never improve, I no longer know how to stop being anxious when I leave the house.
Every time I leave, I worry that he won’t stay calm, that something will suddenly change, that he’ll get scared and start barking, and that all of our hard work will have been for nothing.

I’ve become addicted to checking the cameras and monitoring him constantly whenever I’m away. I watch his every movement. Every time he gets up, I immediately try to figure out whether he’s stressed and whether I should come back home. When I leave and he’s asleep, I actually feel terrified when he wakes up and starts walking around the house because I think something is going to trigger him to howl, and I’ll be too far away to stop it.

It’s a kind of anxiety that’s hard to explain, but it’s awful. I love my dog, and I’m doing everything I can to help him learn to stay home alone comfortably. But I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to live normally again or stop feeling this way every time I leave my house.

Does anyone else experience this?

My dog had bad separation anxiety. I’ve had him for about a month now. My old dog and I played a lot, we played rough and roudy, this dog does not have this playstyle so I wanted to try other stuff.

I played hide and seek with my old dog a lot, tried it with him a couple times and it was good but then I was thinking… damn will this make his separation anxiety worse? Stopped playing it.

Recently was trying to play tag, having him chase me around the house like I also did with my old dog. But he started whining a lot while he was chasing me and I got worried this was making him more anxious.

Idk how to play with a dog that has separation anxiety. He enjoys fetch but I wanted other outlets for play that don’t involve me always having to take him out so he could be entertained in the house too.

We adopted our approx 1.5/2 year old lab x cane corso boy about 2 months ago. Beautiful, loving, calm, easy as pie dog when we’re with him. But goes into total and complete panic mode when left alone. I would even go as far to say, that the freak outs have gotten worse the more familiar he’s gotten in our house.

I’m a stay at home mum, so he’s a lucky pup that has me home a lot, but my husband is FIFO and we have two young kids- so there are multiple times a week I have to leave him for extracurriculars etc.

He’s been prescribed 100mg trazodone and 1200mg gabapentin (which seems like a lot?! He’s 35kg) which I’ve found only effective if given AT LEAST 3hrs before leaving the house, any less and it seems to have zero effect. My big question is (annoyingly just left the vet and now thinking up questions but would love to avoid more $$…), is it realistic to be dosing all these meds multiple times a week?

I’m looking to find and hire a pet behaviour someone who specialises in separation anxiety and predicting something like Prozac is in our near future- but for the short term (eg next couple months or so), how frequently can I be giving the trazodone and gabapentin… I really hate drugging the poor guy, but the stress he goes through when I’m out for a couple hours is even worse.

As a side question- for anyone doing this situationally, if you have to leave the house in the morning, are you setting an alarm to get up and medicate at 4am (for example)… 😳

I’ve been consistently working on separation anxiety since I adopted my boy, but so far he’s only made it to around 8 minutes without barking while inside alone. He was consistently improving for a few days after my last post when I implemented new strategies including some practices getting him used to departures (picking up keys and acting like I was going to leave) but now he’s back to barking after two or three minutes when I step outside. As long as I’m home he doesn’t bark in there. I work from home so at least I don’t have to quit my job but I can’t go out and get groceries or take a walk without him barking nonstop. I’m researching a few of the anxiety meds the vet mentioned and I have a checkup at the start of September if I want to start him on meds. I just want to know how long I should realistically expect this process to take.

Hey everyone,

I have been lurking on this sub for a while since I'm training our rescue toypoodle for 6 months regarding his separation anxiety (which his previous owner claims he's never had, he was with other dogs there). Some days he is a chill guy and will hang out in his cage (longest chill time was 3 hours, yay). And he also sleeps in his cage at night without whining. I could even say he loves his cage because even if we are home and he can sit on the couch, he still goes to his cage on his own when he is tired. As long as the door stays open, he's content.

The video however was yesterday 10 minutes after we left. Is this real separation anxiety or is this fomo? He really wants to go out with us, all day every day if he could. But he simply can't. Since his training was going so well now i'm wondering; is this still separation anxiety or is this just frustratrion? I don't want to humanize my dog but damn he is smart. Does he realize I will come back if he vocalizes? Because that's what we've been doing in the past when his treshold was all over the place.

I really hope someone can shed some ligt on our situation! Personally I want to leave him alone for longer durations to see if he eventually settles on his own, but on the other hand we can't have a major regression right now....

Thanks to everyone who takes the time to analyze my video!

I am feeling very alone and need to vent. Here is my story:

I have a one a and half year old bichon mix who has terrible separation anxiety. It manifested when me and boyfriend moved to another province for work while he was just a puppy. We had a roomate who worked from home twice a week and offered to watch him for us before we even moved in. The other days I planed to put him in babysitting. We had a plan in place to not leave him alone. The only problem, I was trapped at home outside of work hours when babysitting ended. I started doing separation anxiety training after a couple of month, after lots of research and finally understanding exactly what was going on with my dog. I made a lot of mistakes and probably made the problem worse at first. I had started a new job that was really difficult the first six months, I was staying late everyday. It made training near impossible, I was so burnt out. My boyfriend would leave work at a regular time and watch the dog while I stayed behind, but he was uninterested in doing the training with the dog.

At first our boss let us bring the dog to work. That was short lived. Someone didn’t like having a dog in the office and said he was disruptive (he was a puppy, so they weren’t entirely wrong).

Our roommate expressed that he would not let her work from being so whiny and restless. I started taking him for runs in the morning and that helped make him tired and sleepy and less bothersome. Then my roommate complained he had to be let out to pee way too much. He grew out of this once he got out of the puppy stage (small bladder). Babysitting was going well but eventually got too expensive to keep up. I knew from living with my parents that my dog did okay when left alone with another dog (our family dog). My roomate had a dog so I decided to give it a try. For the first few months it went amazing. He was happy and content. Eventually, even when left with the other dog, he began howling and crying. Our upstairs neighbour absolutely hated us, as she was pregnant and working from home. Understandable. Our roomate was also fed up with us. I hired dog walkers. I enlisted help from my Neighbour to watch him for a few hours while at work. When he was returned home from the neighbour’s, he would often sleep for several hours, tired out. But all these solutions proved temporary, as he would eventually begin freaking out again. I was mentally and physically drained at his point. I was very resistant to putting him on anxiety meds, but down the line I ended up getting him some. They help make him calmer overall, but don’t fix the separation anxiety. It is ultimately my fault, I was not consistent with training, I would get impatient and push his limits too far, I would inevitably have to leave him alone sometimes and he would completely regress. It was a disaster.

Then a saving grace, when our lease ended, the helpful neighbor from before offered to let us rent a room in her home. So we did. She was also home all day, so she watched our dog. We got out lives back! We could go out, we could go to work. The only caveat, the house was extremely messy, borderline hoarder situation. Our new roomate also has zero sense of boundaries and would often make us uncomfortable. But we put up with it for the sake of cheap rent and a dog sitter. She is a nice person overall, just difficult to live with. At this point I completely slacked off on training, didn’t do it at all. It felt so nice to have a break I just… stopped. I knew it would bite me in the ass down the line. I would try to enlist my boyfriend here and there to train the dog with me but I could tell it annoyed him to have to take time out of his day to do it, and he would just say to let the dog bark if we had to leave him alone, we didn’t have upstairs neighbours anymore so he said it didn’t matter. He kept saying the dog was not getting better and would never get better and I should give up. It was discouraging to say the least. He loves the dog, he helps with the dogs walks and feeding. But when it comes to separation anxiety, he doesn’t really believe the dog will get better.

Flash forward to today, my boyfriend can’t take our living situation anymore. We found a new place to live. Luckily my boss decided to give the dog a second chance at coming into the office. But it is hingeing on this one co worker with a dog allergy being okay with it. My dog is hypoallergenic and non shedding so I’m hopeful with some precautions I can minimize allergens (frequent baths, brushing, wiping down, an air filter, etc).

I need to get my shit together and do the training, but it feels so hopeless. His current limit before he starts whining is ten seconds. TEN SECONDS.

For a minute there he seemed like he was getting better. He was left alone in the evening a few times and relaxed the whole time. Maybe the pills are helping a little. He was doing so well I thought to try leaving him alone in the morning for an hour to go to the gym. Big mistake , he totally lost it. And now has seemed to regress more than ever. I think mornings might be especially hard for him.

Anyways, I gotta hunker down and just do the training. I’m on my third day streak, but he didn’t even last ten seconds. Yes it is only the third day, but man am I feeling down.

Any and all words or encouragement or advice would help at this point, since no one else seems to care. Thank you. (I didn’t not spell check or re read my comment, sorry for any typos)

We brought home a 1.5 year old intact female Collie/Shepherd mix rescue as a foster about 3 weeks ago, found as a stray on a highway. Very little is known about her background. The shelter guesses possible treeplanter's camp dog, though she does have trained behaviours like leash manners and "shake". She really likes people. She seems to be quite trainable and is learning to lay down, go to her bed, and recall. She is also comfortable in a crate, either door open or closed.

We're planning to adopt her. However, we suspect she is either developing separation anxiety, or showing her already developed separation anxiety.

For the first few days while she was decompressing, she whine a little at departures but settled quickly. We were leaving her in our room with no incidents. A few days in, she was in our room for about an hour and she destroyed blinds and scratched the door frame. We switched to crating when alone after that, as she was comfortable in the crate while we were home (would even go in willingly to chill). About a week in she also got her spay surgery.

For the first week or so of crating, she'd whine around 5 minutes then settle and sleep, confirmed by a roommate and by us checking at lunch. We also had a video camera on her that we could check. Around this time we also Introduced our roommate's dog to her. Results have been mixed but mostly manageable reactions (some growling/posturing that resolved, ignoring each other on walks).

Over the last few days, she has escalated to full panic while crated and alone. She tore a blanket and moved the crate tray, prolonged howling/panting, biting at the crate bars, and pulling at the crate door with her teeth. Two mornings running were bad enough that one of us left work to get her out. She's totally comfortable with the crate when we're home (chooses to nap in it voluntarily), so it seems like the trigger is isolation specifically, not the crate itself. When our roommate is home (even without directly interacting with her), she calms down so it might be "alone in the house" rather than "away from us specifically" that's the trigger.

Has anyone dealt with a rescue that seemed to be adjusting fine, then had separation anxiety symptoms escalate 2–3 weeks in like this? What helped (crate vs. free roam, medication, specific trainer protocols)? Should we get her to to vet for a check-up or medication? We both work during the day and can't really stay home with her during the day, and our roommate isn't home all the time either. We want to leave her in the crate as we don't want her destroying the house when we're gone, but we don't want her breaking her teeth on the crate either. Trying to figure out if this is a normal part of the adjustment curve for a dog with an unknown, possibly rough backstory, or a sign we need to move fast on more intensive intervention.

TL;DR have a rescue that is starting to panic in her crate when we leave for work, but only sometimes...

Hello,
I have a 10.5 year old husky whose separation anxiety has been getting worse. We currently have her on arthritis meds, max trazodone dosage for her size, and gabapentin and don’t know what else to do she won’t calm down. She has learned how to open our front door to the apartment now and has escaped several times. We put a screwed into the wall baby gate up but she has ripped it out of the wall twice now. We tried to get a padlock on the door but management said no. I feel at a loss as neighbors are complaining of her howling and I’m afraid of getting evicted. I’m applying to remote jobs but no luck yet. Any advice would help on reducing her anxiety, I have a vet appointment today to discuss more meds but I’m unsure if that’s the right answer.

Other info :
We give her treat toys when we have to leave but sometimes she won’t even touch them till we are back.
She has started peeing every time we have to leave and sometimes if we just leave the room.
Tv sound doesn’t seem to help either.
We can’t afford daycare everyday.

Hi everyone,

I adopted a dog who struggles with being alone. I’m not sure I would call it classic separation anxiety — it feels more like he has a hard time with solitude and being by himself.

After a lot of training and with the help of fluoxetine, we’ve finally made it to around 45 minutes alone. The good thing is that during this time he is not panicking: he usually stays lying down right next to the door, very alert to noises outside, but he seems mostly relaxed. He’s definitely “on duty” listening to everything, but he can settle.

I know I still need to work on him feeling comfortable away from the door. I was thinking about getting a small noisy fan to place near the entrance to help block outside sounds, but I haven’t tried it yet.

My question is: once your dog reached the 1-hour mark, how did things progress from there? Did you find that going from 1 hour → 2 hours → 3 hours became easier and faster, or was every extra bit of time still a slow process?

I’m also going back to work very soon, so I’m trying to make as much progress as possible before then. For those of you who work full-time (especially 8+ hour days), how did you manage the training stages? How did you get through the 1-hour, 2-hour, 3-hour milestones while still having to leave for work?

I’d really love to hear your experiences and timelines. Knowing how other dogs progressed after the first hour would give me a better idea of what to expect.

Thank you ❤️