Why You Absolutely Must Leave Your Puppy Home Alone

In this episode, we're talking all about fear, as we do in lots of my podcasts, but we're

talking about your fear. We're talking about your anxiety about leaving your puppy. Here's

the thing. During the pandemic, we encountered a whole different situation with regards to

leaving our dogs. Essentially, we discovered that we couldn't leave our dogs. During 2021

and for lots of 2020, many of us were in lockdown. Some of us still are in lockdown.

Many of us were unable to leave our homes and that had an impact on our dogs and on

our puppies. If you've got your puppy in the last year or so, you might have been super

aware of the horror stories of puppies who've never learned to be alone, suddenly struggling

with separation anxiety. That might have left you feeling really nervous about leaving

your puppy because you've heard that if you leave your puppy for too long and they stress

out and they get anxious, you're going to create a problem that's going to take a long

time to fix. If this is you and this is what you fear and if this is what you're feeling

anxious about, stay tuned to this podcast because I want to tell you what you do need

to do with a puppy who haven't learned to be alone and why your fear of leaving your

puppy might actually be the big thing that you need to work on.

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.

All right, first of all, I need to say that if you are worried about leaving your puppy

because you're worried that leaving a puppy for too long is going to create separation anxiety,

kudos to you because unlike lots of dog owners that have come before,

you are thinking about this in the right way. Why do I say that? Well, because traditionally

the advice was always just let the puppy get on with it. If your puppy cries or whines or barks

when you go out, that's just puppy stuff. Don't worry about it. Your puppy just has to learn

to get on with being home alone. But the thing is, that's really outdated advice.

Even for puppies who don't have a tendency towards anxiety, just leaving them to whine and cry

isn't the best way to do things. It's not nice. It's not humane. It's not a kind way to treat

a puppy. And so you are right to think that leaving your puppy to just cry and scream

isn't a good thing. You've definitely taken on board all the stuff you've been reading and

hopefully maybe you've been listening to my podcast and reading my book and you know that

there is a different way of doing things. However, what I'm seeing and I saw this in a Facebook post

the other day in one of my free Facebook groups. What I'm seeing is that with all the best

intentions, some of you have gone kind of to the opposite extreme. Let me tell you about this thread

that I saw. The thread went something like this. Somebody had had a puppy for six or seven months,

I think. For a portion of that, they were in lockdown and they couldn't leave. But then as

they started to or they were able to leave the house, but they were still working from home.

Then as people started returning to the office, they continued to work from home and they

continued to utilize sitters for the times that they did go out. Because there was so much worry

that leaving their puppy for longer than their puppy could cope with was going to cause their

puppy separation anxiety. They didn't suspect that their puppy had separation anxiety. So

this isn't a puppy that obviously was presenting with anxiety and the owner wasn't trying to deal

with a puppy who was already anxious. They were trying to not let their puppy develop

home alone anxiety. And so the comment was, I don't know what to do. I feel really anxious

about leaving my puppy. I've never left her, but I don't want to make her anxious. I don't want to

create a puppy who grows into a dog with separation anxiety. So I just don't want to leave her. I'm

just too scared. And then to my surprise, I'm so glad I read this thread. Lots of people jumped in

and said the same thing. I'm really worried about this too. My friend's got a dog she can't leave

now and she was told to cry out and I don't want to try that. But I'm so nervous about leaving my

puppy because I don't want to make a problem, create a problem that I'm not going to be able

to fix. And I jumped into the comments and I said, whoa, whoa, whoa. And I want to say that to you

as well. I love that you're thinking about your puppy's needs, but you don't need to be anxious.

There are things that you can do to safely teach your puppy that being home alone is okay. And

that's the key. You are doing the right thing and not leaving your puppy to cry out. So massive,

massive kudos for that. But what's missing in the approach you're taking, if this is you,

is you do need to give your puppy some alone time. And I know that makes you nervous because

you're worried that any alone time is going to create a massive problem of home alone anxiety.

But it depends how you do it. So I want to help you kind of complete the journey because you've

started really well. You've taken on board that we're not going to let these puppies just be on

their own and be distressed. But what you need to do now is be brave and take the next step

of gradually teaching home alone time. Let me tell you what that's going to look like.

So first of all, this isn't about going from not leaving your puppy to then leaving your puppy for

an hour to squeal and screech. This is about structured home alone time that teaches your

puppy in a very gentle and gradual way that they can handle alone time. You see, the thing is when

a puppy comes into the world, there's some things that they are naturally able to cope with. But

there's lots about the world we bring them into that isn't natural and it isn't something that

they are naturally able to cope with. Great examples of that are things like body handling.

We assume, because most dogs allow us to, that dogs like being petted and they like being touched.

But it's something that they have to learn for the most part and if you've ever tried

to clip your puppy's toenails, you might have noticed your puppy wriggling its foot.

That's a really unnatural thing for a dog to have its paw held by somebody else because that's a

threat. So we teach puppies that having their paw held is okay and in fact it's really pleasurable

because we might pair it with food. We teach them that going to the vets and having injections is

okay. So there's a ton of stuff in a puppy's life that they have to learn to be okay with.

We want them to learn to be okay with skateboards and men with hats and beards and the way we do

that is we use puppy socialization and in a nutshell that's exposing or letting a puppy

experience something novel, something new, in a way that's really safe and non-scary. So it's not

taking the puppy to the vet and letting it screech and scream and say puppy just needs to learn that

the vets are okay. It's not taking a puppy to the dog park, throwing it in with all the big dogs

and when it tucks its tail and starts to look really scared saying well she needs to learn,

she needs to learn about big dogs. It's safe small exposure that the puppy can cope with.

So anything we want a dog to grow up being okay with we have to give it safe gentle exposure to

early in life and that in a nutshell is puppy socialization and we need to do this in particular

for things that don't come naturally to dogs and a big thing that doesn't come naturally to dogs

is being left home alone. If we don't expose a dog to something that we need it to be okay with

later in life there's a really good chance that it can develop a fear of that. So we can create

fear in a dog in a puppy in two ways. One we can give it too much scary exposure to that thing.

We can you know throw the puppy in at the deep end with all the big bouncy dogs at the dog park

and leave it there even when it's petrified or we can never socialize a puppy with big bouncy dogs

at the dog park from a safe distance in a very tiny incremental way. We can do both of those

we can omit doing the thing that we need the puppy to get used to or we can do it too much

and both of those things can create longer term fear. So when it comes to home alone time

the way that we get a puppy to be okay with being alone is yes we definitely don't do the too much

thing the too much alone time the scary alone time and that's what you're all doing brilliantly

so thank you thank you for for taking that on board. We do need to do the other side of it though

and we need to make sure that our puppies and our dogs are having small gradual gentle exposure to

alone time so that's the missing piece of the equation. Now if you're feeling frightened about

that I want you to take a deep breath and I want you to know that I am giving you permission I'm

giving you permission to leave your puppy but you're going to do it in a really structured and

gentle way. How are you going to do that? You're just going to start with a really small amount of

time it might be seconds and you're going to gradually increase that time noting how your

puppy does with those seconds and only increasing the time when your puppy seems okay with that

duration no big jumping up in minutes or five minutes seconds will do. If you've got a puppy

that really responds very very well to the home alone training then yes you can go up in bigger

chunks of time of course you can but there's very little downside to going gradually other than it's

just going to take you a while but better that it takes you a while than you push your puppy too far

and too fast. So every time you go out of the door and you leave your puppy for these small

increments in time you're teaching your puppy that they can handle being alone that it's absolutely

fine nothing to fear we're all good. I don't want you to worry either about the fact that maybe

you could have started this earlier I mean I would love it if from day one when a puppy comes home

we prioritize home alone training up there with house training and teaching our puppy to sit and

walk nicely next to us but often we don't because we're not told to do that. I absolutely tell

everybody now that this is something they need to do but you might not have heard it from trainers

you might not have been told that you need to do early home alone training and so if this is you

and you're thinking oh why didn't I do this sooner stop beating yourself up right now stop it stop it

because if you didn't know you were supposed to do that how could you have done it. So don't beat

yourself up for not starting this earlier and give it a go. Now where can you find out more

information on this well if you're in my free Facebook groups there's videos on how we do the

process of training exposing your dog gradually to alone time and you can find a ton of information

about it in both of my Be Right Back books. So you need to take a big deep breath even if you're

feeling scared and start leaving your puppy in gradually increasing increments of time. You've

done all the good stuff of not leaving your puppy for too long now you're going to teach your puppy

that being left is okay. The other thing you can do to teach your puppy that being home alone without

you is a good thing is you can allow them to experience a world without you and what do I

mean by that well if you are back at work now chances are you're already doing this because

you're probably using a daycare you're probably having friends come and sit your puppy or maybe

you're paying for a pet sitter and all of that helps teach your puppy that there is more to the

world than you which is a really good thing for your puppy to learn. If you've got a puppy who

not only freaks out when they're alone so maybe your puppy is anxious maybe that's why you've

been worried about leaving them and maybe your puppy freaks out not just when it's alone but

when you're not around too. I've got a plan for you as well so don't worry we can work on that

and that's the technique that I call spreading the love where you're going to get as many people as

possible but start with kind of three or four key people in your puppy's life who are going to do

more of the care more of the fun stuff more of the feeding more of the loving and more of the

cuddling and what that helps to do is not only does it teach your puppy that there's more to

the world than you but it teaches your puppy that actually being without you is really quite cool

because great stuff happens when you're not around. You might need to in the process step back a little

bit from being in your puppy's life which I know is going to be hard but by doing that you can

absolutely show your puppy that he's safe without you and also actually is pretty cool when you're

not around because amazing stuff happens. So just quickly recapping what you're going to do first of

all deep breaths and don't be scared about trying to leave your puppy even if you've never left your

puppy before it's not too late and you're not going to break your puppy or cause long-term anxiety

if you do this in the right way which is number two working on gradually exposing your puppy

to alone time so it's not going from not leaving your puppy to leaving your puppy for hours

it's taking a very gentle approach to increasing the amount of time that your puppy can be alone

if you don't think your puppy has any anxiety at being left you can go up in quite big steps with

the alone time so you might do a minute two minutes three minutes if your puppy freaks when

you leave currently then you're thinking more like seconds and then the third thing you're going

to do is you're going to teach your puppy that there is way more to the world than you you're

going to spread that love amongst friends and family and increase your puppy's circle of trust

and by the way that circle of trust can include daycare staff and it can include pets it is it's

basically anybody other than you so even if you're living on your own you can do this most important

of all don't panic now thinking it's too late i've left it too late i should have done this earlier

because it isn't too late and you definitely can teach your puppy that being home alone is okay

if you need help and support in doing this jump into the facebook groups that i offer because

maybe maybe what you need is just permission and guidance on doing this because it feels so weird

and unnatural all right so whatever you do give it a go don't worry about what you haven't done

and take it from me you've done the right thing far worse that you would have left your puppy for

longer than it could cope with than you've been with your puppy all this time because you didn't

want to create separation anxiety so off you go start the training and keep me posted in the

facebook group bye for now 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 julie naismith.com meanwhile if you enjoyed listening today i would love it if you

would head over to wherever you listen to your podcasts and consider rating my show thanks so

much good luck with that training and bye for now