Is There Actually a Cure for Separation Anxiety in Dogs?

If you're struggling with a dog who's got separation anxiety, I'm sure you must have

thought, can I cure this?

Can I cure my dog of this condition?

It's totally and perfectly reasonable to ask yourself, can I ever have a dog who's cured

of his problem of being left alone?

Well in this episode of the Be Right Back podcast I want to dive into this, let's talk

about whether we can ever really cure dog separation anxiety, and if so how might we

do it and what might that look like?

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.

Okay before we start, let's do a quick reminder of what we mean by separation anxiety in dogs.

Let's just check that we're all talking about the same thing.

Well separation anxiety, it's an extreme condition of a dog having a phobic, a fear based response

to being left.

So we're not talking about a dog that when it's on its own it might look out the window

and bark at the occasional passerby.

We're not talking about a dog who gets bored and two hours into being left finds a cushion,

rips up the cushion and has a bit of a game.

We're talking about a dog who has an abnormal, fear based response to being alone.

And that's the key thing, the key thing is it's not normal.

And normal is, you know, what's normal?

And sometimes I recoil from even using that term because hey, who here has got a dog who's

normal?

But the truth is that most dogs don't struggle with being alone.

They don't love it, I mean no dog is jumping up and down and desperate for us to leave.

Sadly even dogs who are abused tend to want their people to be around.

But most of those dogs who are just accepting and tolerating being left are just getting

on with it.

They're really happy when we get back, they'd rather we hung around for the most part, dogs

like company, but they're not afraid, they're not anxious, they are not going into a panic.

And that's the key thing that defines dogs with separation anxiety.

Now we also get some dogs who aren't coping with alone time, but they're not panicking

either.

But they're really struggling to tolerate it.

So think about, I guess there's three buckets, we've got the vast majority of dogs and it's

probably around 80% of dogs who thankfully for us because we just get lucky and they

are okay with us going.

Then there's the really fearful ones, the ones for whom it's a panic inducing situation.

And then in the middle we've got dogs who can't tolerate the alone time but they're

not panicking.

And these dogs are typically frustrated, they wonder why they haven't been taken with you

and they're either getting extremely bored or they just can't control and contain their

response to being alone.

I sometimes call these dogs the FOMO dogs because they think that maybe something better

is going on on the other side of the door and they've not been invited.

And so they might act out the whole time that you're gone but it's not driven by fear.

These two buckets are separate from the dogs who just get on with being alone and seem

to handle it fine.

Both of these dogs have an intolerance to being left and for both of them we need to

help them to increase their tolerance of being left.

You can't always tell the difference either between the ones who are pathologically anxious

and panicky and the ones who are frustrated because often the presentation is very similar.

We might have barking, we might have destruction, we might have excessive movement around the

home, looking out windows, running backwards and forwards.

Typically dogs who are extremely panicky will show signs that are different so the ferocity

with which they will try and escape might be greater.

These dogs are more likely to harm themselves than the frustrated dogs but it still can

be quite difficult to tell.

Either way we've got a problem, we've got dogs who don't like being left and they are

showing that through vocalising, through destruction and in some cases inappropriate elimination.

So if you've got a dog who's doing any of those and does it consistently and consistent

doesn't mean to say that it has to be every single time you go out.

I think there's often some confusion here and I'll hear this a lot from my clients in

Separation Anxiety Heroes or from people in my free online groups.

I'll hear people say but it doesn't happen all the time.

You know sometimes I can go out and they're fine or sometimes I go out and they only vocalise

for half the time that I'm out.

But consistent is different to every minute of every absence.

Now there are plenty of dogs with separation anxiety who will do their thing the whole

time that you're gone.

So if you've got a dog who barks when you've gone there are some dogs who will bark the

whole time.

If you've got a dog who destroys there are some dogs who will destroy the whole time.

But there are dogs for whom this is an on and off pattern of behaviour but it's still

consistent it happens regularly.

It's not something that happened once and didn't happen again or happened several times

and hasn't happened again.

Even if it comes and goes it's consistent so there is a problem.

Another thing I think that people get confused about is they will sometimes think that they'll

hear people like me talk about the signs of separation anxiety and I definitely talk

about this a lot and they'll say oh but my dog only barks or my dog only chews or my

dog only howl only defecates but he doesn't howl.

Your dog doesn't need to do all of these things for it to be a problem.

Basically if your dog is doing things to excess that we wouldn't expect from a typical dog

then you've got a dog with separation anxiety or at the very least a dog who can't tolerate

being home alone.

And so can you see it doesn't have to be all the things and it might not be any of the

big things that we always talk about with a dog with separation anxiety but if your

dog is doing things that present as a problem when you're gone you've got a dog with a problem

of tolerating alone time.

Okay so those are the signs those are the things to look out for.

And listening to this podcast you may have come to this podcast already knowing that

there's stuff going on with your dog that isn't right.

You just know that you may be well down that journey you may have worked this out a long

time ago and now you're coming to this podcast thinking yeah Julie but just tell me how do

I deal with that.

So let's talk about that.

Well the good news is that we can give dogs the coping mechanism to handle alone time.

We can help them be more comfortable with being left whether they are just feeling massively

like they've been left out or it's panic inducing that being separated from the rest of their

family is just too much for them and it sends them into an anxiety spiral.

So regardless of what's causing this intolerance to being left we can help a dog feel better

about being alone and we do that in the same way so whether you're listening to this thinking

oh I think I've got I've heard Julie talk about those FOMO dogs before those fear of

missing out dogs and I think that's my pup so that's better right and I don't have to

do stuff or I don't have to do as much.

So if you're thinking that or if you're listening and thinking no no I've definitely got the

panicky one the approach is going to be the same so that's good news because we don't

have to make this complicated.

What we're going to do is use a technique that helps your dog be more tolerant with

alone time.

Okay so just keep thinking about that try not to worry too much about whether it's panic

or partying or fear or FOMO I know I've talked about that in the past but I now think it's

much simpler to just reflect on have I got a dog who handles alone time or a dog who

doesn't.

Okay so we're all here I think because we've got a dog who doesn't handle alone time so

what can we do well we're going to use a technique called exposure therapy it sounds like a fancy

term and it comes from the world of human psychology that we apply we take what we know

about how human brains adapt and we apply it to dogs brains because dogs and dog and

human brains are really quite similar and so the techniques tend to work in a similar

way there are differences but there's enough similarities and in fact we take exposure

therapy a step further and we call it gradual exposure therapy there are many different

types of exposure therapy you might have heard of a term called flooding.

Flooding is a form of exposure therapy and it's very different to gradual exposure I'll

talk about gradual exposure first and then I'll tell you a bit about flooding.

Gradual exposure is where we take the thing that our dog is scared of and for a human

with a phobia it would be whatever the human's scared of but let's focus on dogs so we take

whatever our dog is scared of and we do expose the dog to that fear or at least to the thing

it's scared of and that's a subtle but really important difference because we want to expose

our dog to the thing it's scared of at a level of intensity that doesn't actually make

the dog frightened so it's like yes I know you're frightened of alone time but what we're

going to do is we're going to turn that right down find a level where you can experience

alone time so you're exposed to it but it's not going to scare you there's going to be

no fear massively massively important so it's exposure without the fear all right flooding

and it's really important I think to talk about flooding because especially today when

I see tons of stuff going around the internet about people like dog daddy and there are

trainers in the UK who are all over the internet doing abusive punitive bullying just horrid

horrid things to dogs and seemingly getting results they don't believe everything you

see in a 20 second video however some people would claim that these trainers are getting

results they are inverted commas in inverted commas transforming dogs well yeah they may

well be they may well be transforming a dog into a dog who's now shut down who is so scared

in fact of the thing that it's been exposed to that it stops responding and that is a

term we call flooding now flooding can actually produce a response where the patient if we're

talking about humans nor the dog in when we're talking about dogs with fears comes out to

the other side of exposure and goes oh I survived that wasn't so bad and that helps the dog

overcome the fear but it's so problematic it is so problematic with human patients it

tends not to be often used as a treatment because it is a horrible horrible experience

imagine think right now of something that you are scared of the thing that you hate

most in the world imagine being exposed to that at full intensity so you know if you

if there's a particular animal or insect that you're frightened of flooding would put you

in the same room as like hundreds of those and leave you there until eventually you go oh okay

right you go through a massive process of panic and then eventually maybe you'll come out the

other side and go okay so you can see why therapists don't like using it because it's

hellish for people not only is it hellish but it often doesn't work and it can make things worse

so when therapists the few that do use flooding when therapists do use flooding patient consent

is everything it's essential so people have to understand the risks this could make it worse

they have to understand how unpleasant the process would be and they have to subscribe to that they

have to agree to that so let's come back to our dogs and flooding exposure well here's the thing

we can't ask dogs whether they're okay with this so we've got a process that's flawed that

potentially doesn't work that could make things worse and that is a horrific process for the

subject to go through so no flooding forget it let's not do this to our dogs all that says when

a dog does respond to a flooding process that's great for a TikTok video but miserable miserable

for that dog and for all the other dogs for whom these trainers attempt to treat with flooding and

it doesn't work a classic example of flooding in separation anxiety training is the cry out

method and now I'm guessing that you wouldn't have got this far into this podcast without having

at least been told about crying it out or even tried it yourself because everybody tells you

now crying out is essentially a form of flooding it's you are just going to be left you're going

to get on with it you're going to come out the other side and you're going to be okay and that's

also important to remember about when flooding is used with human patients in the rare situations

where it is used it's done alongside a therapist who talks the patient through the process so how

does that feel and you came out the other side and it was all okay wasn't it well we can't do

that with dogs we can't have that cognitive debate with dogs we can't aid them in that way so they

are left to it so if you ever hear somebody say oh you know I let my dog cry out my dog ended up

being okay just remember that this is what they might have gone through so very very different to

the technique of gradual exposure that we use for training separation anxiety so massive aside there

but I think it's so important because people are still recommending that we flood dogs so we don't

do that we're going to choose an ethical humane kind method of gradually exposing our dogs to

alone time and what that does is it changes their response to alone times currently they are

sensitized to alone time that's just a fancy term for they really don't like it what we want is to

change that response from I really hate this situation to just neutral so their response to

alone time becomes neutral we're not going to get them to jump up and down every time we go out so

we're not expecting the response to change from negative to hugely positive we just want the

response to go from negative to neutral so that's what we're trying to do we're exposing them to the

thing that they're not happy with and making them okay with it okay is what we aim for and that's

what gradual exposure looks like and then the other thing that we make sure we do is that we

aren't overloading the dog's brain with lots of other challenging and potentially aversive situations

so what do I mean aversive? Aversive is anything that a dog finds unpleasant, scary, undesirable,

doesn't want and so on so that's what we mean by aversive and when we're working to help a dog

become okay with something it's not currently okay with let's not forget that we need to keep their

world safe so we need to make sure that what's going on around them isn't overloading them isn't

triggering them you might have heard of the term trigger stacking one thing that we can do to help

separation anxiety training help gradual exposure training work better is make sure that the dog

isn't exposed to lots of other trigger sacks at other times outside of being left and then the

final piece of this puzzle in terms of how we increase their tolerance of alone time is we have

to stop them being exposed to being alone so just as I was saying that we don't want anything externally

triggering for them we don't want to use aversive training or harsh training methods we don't want

them to want to put them into lots of scary situations we need to make sure that alone time

is good as well alone time is okay and that might mean that right now if your dog can't be alone

then when you're doing gradual exposure separation anxiety training you can't leave your dog the only

time you could leave your dog is for any amount of duration that they can handle without getting

scared and if that's something you're still coming to terms with I just want you to know that you are

not alone if you think my mind is blown why are people telling me that I can't leave my dog that

is just ridiculous I just want you to know you're not alone it in thinking it's ridiculous every

single one of us and I remember that feeling all too well who's ever been told to not leave our

dogs in fact I was never told not to leave my dog Percy but the more I dug into how recovery

would work more I realized okay this is bonkers but I yeah we can't leave him we can't leave him

I still remember that conversation with my husband yes so okay you know what we're gonna do it's just

gonna turn our life upside down turn everything on its head and stop leaving him and it's hard

even though I knew it was the right thing to do it's not just physically and financially hard

it's just the burden I don't need to tell you all of this you you all of you know this all of you

know about this burden but maybe if you're listening to this and you you don't have a dog

with separation anxiety maybe you're listening because a friend does the burden of having a dog

who you constantly have to think about whenever you're making any single arrangement is draining

so if you are a friend or a family member who sees somebody going through this the number one

thing you could do for them today is just reach out and say can I have your dog for an hour anyway

okay so you're listening to this probably because you've got a dog with separation anxiety so you

know that burden it is tough and I would have never ever ever asked you to do that just cause

right because I've been through that and it's it's just an awful awful place to be so if you hear

me going on about this particular thing of not leaving your dog I don't just do it to be difficult

I do it because it's the best way to get your dog over this and that's the best way to come out the

other side of separation anxiety all right so let's talk about how you can help this go a bit

faster well first of all you can definitely think about reaching out for professional advice so

separation anxiety training this gradual exposure involves taking a small amount of what your dog

is scared of and doing training sessions that mean you go out for whatever time your dog can

currently cope with and you do that repeatedly and you gradually increase the time that your dog

so you know maybe right now your dog could only do two seconds with you being on the other side

of the door you go from two seconds and you gradually increase that time as long as your

dog is tolerating it as long as your dog isn't panicking in response you don't do that in one

session by the way you repeat the session so every training session will have a target duration and

that target duration will go up when your dog can tolerate it going up and if you think your dog

isn't handling it the next session you make it easier in fact I stopped saying easier because

every session should be easy every training session should be easy you should either have

a target duration that whatever target duration you're working towards it should always be something

the dog doesn't freak out so it should always be easy but you might have longer ones and you

want to have shorter ones I've got a ton of information on this by the way in my book so

that's a really good place to start if you're thinking oh I actually do want to give this a go

tons of training tips and exercises and tables that you can fill in available in my book the

Be Right Back book same name as the podcast so if you want to really get cracking with separation

anxiety training that's a great place to start you can also though think about hiring somebody

because you might be listening to this thinking gosh that sounds quite complex it sounds like

there's quite a lot to it it's sort of one of those simple but complex things so yes there

are lots of moving parts with separation anxiety training so hire a professional look at getting

one of my certified SA pro trainers they know separation anxiety in and out inside and outside

they really know their stuff so working one-to-one is a great option now that's not for everybody

not everybody has the budget for one-to-one and that's why I mentioned the book because the book

is a really good and very very affordable place to start but you can also dive into my free

communities if free is what you're looking for then starting with free by joining one of my

Facebook groups where you'll get free advice another option is you can work as what part

of my membership which is a monthly membership and again really affordable but it is something

that you probably need some guidance on so even if it is just diving into my free group even if

it is just spending fifteen dollars ten pounds on my book you need a plan because when you do this

training you need to make it as easy as possible because there is a lot to it and getting the right

tools and getting the right information is going to make it easier for you also think about joining

one of the free groups that I mentioned not just to get advice but to get community and to get

support because I don't need to tell you this is a lonely lonely journey and nobody wants to do

difficult things on their own well maybe we do but you shouldn't because the research is really clear

on this when we do things that are really difficult we do them better and are more likely to stay the

course when we do them with other people so I highly highly recommend that you jump into one of

my free groups and even if you just read the comments you might feel like oh my goodness I

am no longer alone chances are you don't have many people in your circle who have a dog with

separation anxiety so finding people that do it's going to make you feel a whole lot better and then

another thing that can help you so I talked about you getting professional help I've talked about you

diving into an online community but think about therapeutic assistance and by that I mean anxiety

medication for dogs it's something that maybe as recently as 10 years ago we might all have freaked

out at but we're now seeing really good results when we combine this gradual exposure separation

anxiety training with medication so it's not one or the other it's dog anxiety medication plus the

separation anxiety training those two combined can be really powerful anxiety medication doesn't work

for every dog but when it does work it's so powerful when combined with the training and I

hear people say so often my dog was so different I was really good at it I did it and I didn't lose

my dog I still had my wonderful dog and their amazing personality so do think about it because

you know when it works with the training it's golden so I did a bit of a teaser at the start

of this episode in fact this episode is the title of this episode has the word cure in it but I've

left it until now to talk about whether we can actually cure separation anxiety so I hope you

stayed to the end and didn't mind me dangling that little carrot I haven't talked about curing

separation anxiety at all throughout this podcast so now you might be thinking did I even tune into

the right podcast and that's deliberate it's deliberate because I want us to stop thinking

about curing separation anxiety I know that's what we want and I know that's a natural response we

think we can cure stuff and curing sounds so final and so done doesn't it but when we're

talking about brains we're actually talking more about recovery and change than we are curing and

we definitely don't fix things back in the day my podcast used to be the fixing separation

anxiety podcast because when I first started out in this world that's what other trainers would

talk about they'd say yeah you know we can fix separation anxiety fixing the unfixable I'd hear

people say well no fix things like fixing a car or maybe even fixing a broken leg you don't fix

emotional brain related conditions what you do is you change the way the brain responds that leads

to a recovery and an improvement and really that's what we're looking for we're looking for an

improvement in the dog's response to being alone ideally I think most of us want that improvement

to look like a dog who can at least handle three to four hours and for many of us that's enough for

many of us that that's enough to give us normality back and so I really hope that we can stop

thinking actually about curing and start thinking about recovery and recovery by the way for lots

of dogs can look like cured it can look like the dog is completely over this thing like it never

happened but the reason why I just want us to stop using the word cured is because it is still a

reaction that a dog could have so when you've been scared of something so same with human patients

that neural pathway that response of I don't like that thing that scares me is still there in the

brain somewhere our job when we're doing gradual exposure therapy is to make that old association

really dusty and really distant so that never gets used again but it could come back and so I think

when people are talking about curing their dog or I want to cure this condition if stuff happens in

the future that brings that back and a classic one can be if you move house often dogs don't take

their newfound home alone confidence with them and they take a little bit of time getting used

to a new home and so you might think I'm thought my dog was cured of being home alone of having

home alone issues and now they seem to be stressing out again and the reason is that that old memory

that old association that was really dusty and wasn't getting used just started to get used again

and that's why I think if we still keep talking about curing we're not really understanding what's

going on with our dogs and we're not describing the process either so maybe that sounds really

negative oh wow she's telling you that you know my dog can't be cured or maybe you're thinking

well that just sounds like words because yeah that's just semantics what I want you to know

is that there is a really good chance that you can get a dog who you can leave right and that's

what matters does it matter that your dog's brain hasn't eradicated this response I think

it does matter because I think you then it helps you understand what happens if that response ever

returns I think it also helps you understand what's going on with the training and I think

also helps us understand why we can't expect a dog to be okay in every single situation for

the rest of its life but I also don't want it to make you feel despondent because just because we

can't in inverted commas cure this condition doesn't mean to say that we can't transform

a dog's life and our life with this training we can we absolutely can and when you have a dog who

can be happy on their own for three or four hours who's asked to sleep the whole time you're out or

even is just pottering around the house looking you know out the window and choosing another bed

to lie on when that happens when you've got a dog like that you don't care whether that dog

you'll use whether you're using the word cured or not you've got your life back and you've got your

dog non-anxious that you've been left you've got a happier dog so who cares whether that's actually

cured you've got what you wanted you've got what you needed and you've got a dog who's in a better

place so I hope this episode has been helpful I do want you to know that there is hope that hope

isn't enough by the way and that there is a strategy and the strategy is gradual exposure

do check out some of the resources I've mentioned and maybe I'll see you online soon

in one of my communities all right thanks for listening I'll catch you later 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 julienasmith.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

you