Are You Really The Problem? Separation Anxiety Cause and Prevention

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Fixing Separation Anxiety Podcast. I'm your

host, Julie Naismith, and I help dogs and owners around the world to overcome separation

anxiety so that you can get your life back on track and your dog can have stress-free

home alone time. Okay, let me ask you a question. Has anybody ever said to you that you're the

problem? Has anybody suggested that you either caused your dog's separation anxiety in the

first place, or what you're doing is making it worse, or you didn't do enough to prevent

it? Well, if that's you, you need to listen to this week's episode, because I'm going

to bust one of the biggest myths of all, that you didn't cause your dog's separation anxiety.

But more importantly than that, I'm going to spend some time talking about what, if

anything, we could, should, and might have done to prevent separation anxiety happening

in the first place.

Hello, and welcome to the Be Right Back Separation Anxiety Podcast. Hi, I'm Julie Naismith, dog

trainer, author, and full-on separation anxiety geek. I've helped thousands of dogs overcome

separation anxiety with my books, my online programs, my trainer certification, and my

separation anxiety training app. And this podcast is all about sharing my tips and tricks

to help you teach your dog how to be happy at home alone too.

This week, I'm talking about whether you caused your dog's separation anxiety, and could you

have prevented it? I talk about this topic a lot, particularly that did you cause your

dog's separation anxiety? And honestly, I don't think I can talk about it too often,

because I see your comments, I hear what you're saying, you all feel like it's your fault.

So, I'm just going to keep on banging the drum about the cause of separation anxiety

and your involvement in it, because I don't want you to feel this way.

All right, let's talk about causing and preventing separation anxiety then.

One of the reasons why I wanted to talk about this topic is not only do I see it coming up

all the times in my groups, and I hear my clients talk about it, but the other day,

something happened that made me think, ah, that's interesting, because we don't think

that way with separation anxiety. Let me tell you what it was. I live in the mountains,

it's a beautiful place to live, I'm very lucky. One of the things that we get in the mountains

is a lot of snow. So, a few weeks ago, a couple of weeks ago, we had tons of snow, massive,

massive amount of snow, but we also had weird wet snow. I won't bore you with the details.

Apparently, there are people who know this stuff, they're called snow scientists, but

those sorts of snow conditions cause avalanches. Now, we live near the mountains,

so avalanches are not cool in town. What happens, therefore, is that we get avalanche prevention.

Interestingly, avalanche prevention, and what that involves is bombing. So,

avalanche prevention team drops bombs from a helicopter and the noise

creates an avalanche, but it's controlled, so it's preventing an unexpected avalanche.

And that got me thinking about two things. One, first of all, I expected my dog, Tex, to react

to the avalanche bombs, because about two years ago, he started with thunder phobia

from nowhere. He was five years old, he'd been fine, suddenly started with thunder phobia,

so I was expecting him to react to the bombs, and he didn't, and I was so proud of him.

He started to react to thunder two years ago, I started to respond with some training and some

medication, and it seems to have helped him get through it. So, that was one thing.

And why, what's the connection between Tex's fear of avalanche bombs and, or thunder,

and separation anxiety? Well, no, I've told lots of people about his problems with thunder phobia

and with avalanche bombs and how much better it's getting, but nobody's ever said to me,

well, that's because you, or that's because you didn't. And I just thought, well, wait a minute,

because my separation anxiety owners, my clients get this all the time. Well, your dog's got

separation anxiety because of this, because you did that, or you didn't do this, or you're doing

this, or you didn't do that, or you're not doing that. But with lots of other behavioural problems

that dogs get, we don't get the same grief. Yeah, maybe sometimes people will do a little

bit of blaming us, but for the most part, we accept that dogs get frightened of things.

They get frightened of loud noises, and it's not necessarily because we are a weak leader,

or whatever that means. So, there was that going through my mind, but then there was also this

thing about, you know, really sadly, people do get caught in avalanches, and they can take all

the precautions they like, and they would still get stuck in an avalanche. We don't go around

blaming them. If they've taken all their precautions, we just say, what an unfortunate

turn of events. So, those two things got me thinking, so why do we accuse separation anxiety

owners of causing their dog separation anxiety? Why do we do that over and over again? Dogs fear

things. They just do. They might fear going to the vet, or maybe your dog doesn't like having

its nails done. Maybe it's frightened of clippers. Maybe your dog is frightened of being in the car.

If you say to your family and friends, oh my goodness, he's developed, you know, Roy is about

to have a really crazy fear of being in the car. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's

happening. Nobody, well, I hope not, I suspect not, nobody is telling you it's because you're

a weak person, or because you gave Roy too much affection, or because you let him go out the door

first. They accept. He's got a fear of the car. But separation anxiety, no, we don't get the same

credit. We don't get the, nobody cuts us the same slack. I don't know why exactly. I don't know why

they blame us so much when my dogs have separation anxiety. Maybe it's because there is that link

between us and our dogs, and it's relationship based, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't

know why people are so quick to judge, though, when they have no evidence for us causing separation

anxiety in dogs. Quick refresh, what do we know about what causes separation anxiety in dogs?

It can be many things. It could be a change later in life. It could be genetics. We think that's a

really big factor. It could be an early life experience. Maybe your dog had a really bad

experience when it was a puppy. Maybe its mother had a really bad experience when she was carrying.

There can be lots of reasons why dogs develop fear and why they develop separation anxiety,

but the answer is we don't exactly know why. That being said, it doesn't stop anybody from accusing

you of causing your dog separation anxiety, particularly all those armchair experts out

there. Lots of people will tell you that this might not be their first dog. They may have had

a dog before, so if it is relationship based, if it is down to what we are doing, why doesn't

somebody end up, they have 10 dogs in their life, why haven't all 10 dogs got separation anxiety?

It just doesn't make sense. It's not what we're doing. There's more, way more going on. So people

can have 5 dogs and 10 dogs and never act any differently with those dogs, and yet those dogs

don't end up with separation anxiety. But let's then talk about this prevention thing, because I

know that's why you're on, that's why you're listening. How do we prevent problem behaviours

in dogs? Let's start with that generally. So overall, what do we do to prevent problems

developing in dogs? There's three big things that we do. Three things we've got in our toolkit.

First, we socialise. So if you've got a puppy, if you've had a puppy, you'll remember all the

guidance to socialise. What does that mean? It means we safely and cautiously expose our puppies,

our young puppies, to experiences, to the world, in a way that makes them,

that exposes them and gives them the experience of the world, but doesn't scare them. So socialisation

is about safe, controlled exposure to the big, wide world, so that as they get older and their

fear naturally builds, because they go through a period where they don't have any fear, and then

their fear naturally develops. So when that fear naturally develops, they're not suddenly overwhelmed

by things they've never experienced or never encountered before. So we gradually, cautiously,

carefully expose them to the wide world. For example, if you have a dog who, or if you have

a puppy, or any puppy, to prevent a puppy from being frightened of strangers when the puppy gets

to become an adult dog, one of the best things we can do is get that puppy to socialise with

lots of different strange people, people with hats, people with sticks, safely, cautiously,

not throwing them in at the deep end and saying, oh it's fine, he's a puppy, he needs to learn.

That's not socialisation. But that's one of the best things we can do to help prevent a dog

becoming frightened of strangers. So socialisation is just about exposure. Then the next thing we

can do, number two, we can train them. Of course we can, we can train dogs in anticipation of a

problem behaviour developing. So if you have a high energy, bouncy, young dog, then you can train

your dog, even before they start bowling people over at the door, you can train your dog that when

the door opens they go to a mat. So we can train our dogs an alternative behaviour way before the

problem becomes a problem. Just expect that your big bouncy dog is probably going to bowl people

over when they come in. So let's just train them to do another thing when visitors come to the house.

The third thing we can do is we can use what we call management, which is basically we stop a dog

from being able to rehearse the problem behaviour. While we're training our big bouncy dog to go to a

mat when visitors come round, we could, before they really land or get really solid on the going

to mat behaviour, we could use a baby gate or we could pop them in a crate when visitors come

round. It stops them rehearsing the unwanted behaviour. So we've got socialisation, we've

got training and we've got management. Stopping rehearsals is really important. It's as important

as the other factors too. But how do these three things apply to separation anxiety? Well,

first of all, let's socialise our puppies, our young puppies to safe home alone time. So things

like popping out of sight while you're doing the chores at home or you're cooking, closing doors

cautiously and gently on our puppies so that they know we might not always be around. So socialise

them, do natural things that show our puppies that we go, we come back, we go, we come back.

Interestingly, in very young children, we're talking about under twos, nine months to two

years old, kids that age, children that age can develop a form of separation anxiety, which is

what is based on a problem of what we call object permanence. It sounds fancy, but basically all it

means is that when babies develop, they don't know that when things disappear, they haven't

disappeared completely. So just because I can't see mummy anymore doesn't mean to say that mummy

has vanished forever into thin air. We know that just because we can't see something doesn't mean

to say it's gone poof. It just means we can't see it, there's something in the way. So you know that

game of peekaboo? We can teach babies that things go and come back using a game of peekaboo. And

that's a bit what we would do with a young puppy. Very safely, very carefully do some peekaboo type

stuff that shows that when we go, we come back that when things disappear from sight, they haven't

gone forever. And then number two, we can do home alone training. Now this is similar, but it's a

bit more structured. You are going to teach your puppy using a very gradual stepped approach to

alone time, you're going to teach your puppy that it can tolerate being alone. You might start with

out of sight exercises where you gradually build up the time in the house, or you might head

straight for the front door and build up time that way. And if your puppy isn't anxious, it will crack

through home alone training in no time at all. And the third thing we can do is manage absences.

Let's not let our puppies, especially our anxious ones, howl and howl and howl and rehearse the

behaviour that barking and howling is and ends to remain. So let's not let them rehearse

home alone problem behaviours. Let's manage it by keeping them calm, keeping them settled,

keeping them under their threshold if they're getting anxious. Don't just assume that they're

going to be okay. So we can do those three things. If we do all those three things, does it mean we

will end up with a dog who is fine on their own? No, it doesn't. I'm so sorry. I wish I could say

that it was. Anybody who's got a dog who's frightened of strangers or doesn't like going

to the vet anymore will tell you, or not anybody, but some people will tell you they did socialise

their dog. They did take preventative measures to stop that problem behaviour. But some dogs

are just on a trajectory. They are just on a path to end up with that problem behaviour.

And here's the really frustrating thing, especially if you've got a dog with separation anxiety.

Some people don't do any of these things and their dog is fine. Some people do all these

things and their dog isn't fine. And that seems so unfair, doesn't it? But the way I look at it,

it's a bit like if you don't want to get a cold in winter, one of the best things you can do is

wash your hands regularly and especially not touch your face when you've been near somebody

who's sneezing. But washing your hands regularly, they say, the experts tell us, is one of the best

ways we can prevent getting a cold. Does it mean we won't get a cold? No, but we might as well give

it a go. That's how I look at prevention when it comes to separation anxiety. Does it mean your

dog won't get separation anxiety? No, it doesn't. But why wouldn't you give it a chance? Because it

might be the best chance a dog's got of not developing separation anxiety. And even if you

do it and your dog still gets separation anxiety, you haven't failed. It just means your dog was

probably going to get this anyway. So never think it's your fault. Never think you've failed. It

isn't your fault. You didn't cause your dog separation anxiety. But maybe in the future,

there might be a couple of things you could do that may stop a dog from developing it.

Not guaranteed, but worth giving it a chance. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast.

I know you've got a ton of options when it comes to podcasts to listen to. So I really appreciate

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with tons of advice on how to train, how to deal with people in your life, who might judge you for

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training. You can grab a copy at Amazon. Alright, that's it from me. I will see you online soon.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Be Right Back

Separation Anxiety podcast. If you want to find out more about how I can help you further,

head over to julienasmith.com. Meanwhile, if you enjoyed listening today, I would love it if you

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Thanks so much. Good luck with that training and bye for now.