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Welcome to the Fixing Separation Anxiety Podcast, where it's all about healing your dog, regaining

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your freedom and getting your life back on track.

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And now, here's your host, Julie May Smith.

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Well hey there and welcome to another episode of the Fixing Separation Anxiety Podcast.

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This week I want to tackle a topic that I'm seeing a lot of reporting about and that's

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whether this whole crazy exceptional lockdown thing is going to make your dog's separation

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anxiety worse.

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You might have read articles about that or seen stuff online and you might have started

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to get a bit worried.

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So I want to make sure as ever that I give you the facts and I give you some tips and

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pointers as to what to do.

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So is it true?

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Is it really true?

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Is everything that's going on at the moment with you either working from home or being

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furloughed or the kids being off school, is all of that likely to make your dog's separation

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anxiety worse?

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Or are people just looking for a headline?

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People just trying to find things to write?

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Well, today I'm going to give you some insights.

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I'm going to share with you some science about why actually, yes, this whole situation might

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have the potential to make your dog worse.

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Even though lots of people, lots of commentators who I've seen write about this aren't best

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qualified, they are actually on to something.

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Every January and every September, I see this very phenomenon.

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What goes on in January?

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What goes on in September?

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Well, people return to normal routines.

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In January, many of us have been off for a long period of time, maybe a week, maybe two

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weeks.

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We've had family, we've had extended family around, we've had friends around.

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It's been a frenzy of people and our dogs get used to that.

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And then we go back to work and it seems like our dogs have forgotten how to be home alone.

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I see it in September for exactly the same reason.

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Dogs have had an amazing summer hanging out with you.

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They've loved the attention, they've loved the company.

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And then when you go back to work, boom, it's a massive, massive thing for your dog to deal

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with.

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It's not really surprising that dogs prefer being with us than without us.

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There's so many funny memes, aren't there, at the moment about how the dogs are all jumping

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up and down for joy and the cats are all like, when you all getting out of here, this is

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my space.

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And there's a little bit of truth in that because we've spent best part of 30,000 years

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selecting dogs on the basis of them loving us, on the basis of them wanting to be with

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us, on the basis of them loving company.

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So no wonder dogs love being with us.

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So let me explain what is going on, what happens in January, what happens in September and

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what actually might happen when you go back to work and what you can do to prevent issues

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coming up.

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I want to start by just doing a really quick refresher of how we help dogs get over separation

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anxiety.

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We use a technique that's called gradual exposure.

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The whole thing, the point of gradual exposure is that we are exposing our dogs to the thing

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that they're frightened of.

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It's a technique we use for human phobia.

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So it's not just dogs who go through this treatment.

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It's basically a face the fear approach.

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You face your fear in order to come out the other side.

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So when a dog doesn't like being home alone, they're not being spiteful, they're not being

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bad.

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They're frightened of being home alone.

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They have a phobia of it.

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That's why gradual exposure really helps.

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We gradually, gradually using tiny increments of time, teach your dog that being home alone

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is safe.

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It's not scary.

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So we're taking the thing that the dog is frightened of.

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That's the home alone time.

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We're exposing our dogs to it, but in tiny, tiny doses.

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The dose is so small that the dog isn't frightened by it.

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So the timing, so for us with separation anxiety training, the dose is the time alone.

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If a dog was frightened of people, the dose would be how close to people the dog might

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be able to get.

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But for us, we focus on duration and increasing duration in tiny, tiny increments.

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So that every, at every step the dog goes, Oh yeah, that was fine.

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I can handle that.

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So that's how we help them get over their fear of being home alone.

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We help them to face their fear.

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But of course, right now they are totally cocooned from their fears.

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I mean, 100% cocooned from their fear of being home alone and not having any exposure

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to it.

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But why would not being exposed to your fear make things worse?

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Why would dogs not having to face their fear make things worse?

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Because when we do gradual exposure treatment, we're not exposing dogs to home alone time

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that's threatening or anxiety inducing.

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We take the dose, we take the intensity and we turn it right down.

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So yes, they're facing a form of the thing that they're frightened of, but without it

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being fear inducing.

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So why would not facing their fear now actually make things worse?

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Well, there is something going on and we see this in human psychology.

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We absolutely see it in dogs.

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When we stop facing our fears altogether, when we go into avoidance mode, not only do

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we not make things better, but it's the avoidance that triggers the fear.

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We could go through life, if you have a phobia of anything, you could try and go through

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life avoiding it.

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The problem is with most things, eventually you might encounter the thing you're frightened

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of.

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If you're frightened of spiders, you can do your utmost to try and avoid living in a damp

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house that might have spiders or you might try and avoid seeing any photos of spiders.

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You might do everything you can and then one day you'll see a spider.

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It's really hard to 100% control the things that we're frightened of, to stop.

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Maybe if you have a fear of flying, you might decide to never fly again, but most likely

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you might still fly on holiday.

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You might just not fly as often as you would like to because of the fear.

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So yes, we can go through life avoiding fear, but it never makes the fear go away and the

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same is true with dogs.

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So if they constantly avoid their fear, they will not get over it.

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The good thing about avoiding fear is we're not inducing horrible, panicky, problematic

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situations that can actually change the dog's brain for the worse.

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So don't ever let anybody tell you that stopping your dog having fearful home alone experiences

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is a terrible thing.

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It's not at all.

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And if I had to choose between you being home alone with your dog all the time or you leaving

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your dog for eight hours for way longer than your dog could cope with, then you being home

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with your dog is a lot better for your dog's brain and a lot less damaging to your dog's

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brain than leaving your dog constantly to go over threshold.

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What happens though with the avoidance scenario is the longer we go without facing our fear

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at that tiny intensity, at the intensity that doesn't scare us, the more likely we are to

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react because of the novelty of that fear.

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So let's take our dogs who are frightened of being home alone.

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They have no training.

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We're not doing that gradual exposure treatment.

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We are not exposing them to tiny, safe amounts of alone time.

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So the next time they experience it, the contrast is huge.

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The novelty is massive and it's the novelty that's triggering.

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It's almost like our dogs have forgotten what it's like to be home alone safely because

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they just haven't experienced it enough.

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And that memory, that ability to be left isn't hardwired into their brain yet.

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So when they experience it again, boom, that's when they explode.

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And that's absolutely what I see in January and September.

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And that's absolutely what you would experience if you went through life trying to avoid something

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you were frightened of until one day you encountered it again.

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So just to recap, exposing our dogs to way too much alone time, to scary, scary, scary

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alone time, really bad for the dog's brain.

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We get panic.

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We get phobia coded into the dog's brain.

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So we don't do that.

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The ideal scenario with a dog who has separation anxiety is we gradually expose them to safe

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amounts of alone time so that they learn that they can be okay.

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But we do have this weird situation where when we do neither of those two things, they

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forget what it's like to be home alone.

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So the next time, even for 10 seconds that they are left alone, they find it really difficult.

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The contrast is so huge.

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So you are not going to make your dog's separation anxiety significantly worse because you are

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home alone with them.

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You may find that your dog struggles though when you go back because of this novelty,

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this contrast issue.

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But the good thing is there are things that you can do.

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And I'm going to give you some tips.

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But before I do that, what about normal dogs?

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So say your dog never exhibited separation anxiety.

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Before you went into lockdown, you had one of those dogs that could be left for four

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or five hours a day and was fine.

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What if you had one of those dogs?

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Will they develop separation anxiety?

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Well, let me take you back to my January, September examples.

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I absolutely do get calls from people who say, I don't know what's happened.

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You know, back in July, my dog was fine.

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He could be left.

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And now we're back at work and he is losing his mind.

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He was fine.

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And now he's not.

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Here's what I think is happening to that dog, to those dogs.

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More likely than not, that dog either had mild separation anxiety that was undiagnosed

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before the long period of being with people all the time, or this was a dog that as a

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result of early life experiences or genetics was on a trajectory to develop separation

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anxiety.

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A dog who would have developed it anyway.

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And the separation anxiety gets triggered by that massive contrast of being with you

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all the time and then boom, you go back to work.

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So when people say my dog was fine and then two months later, my dog is not fine.

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What I think is going on is these would, these are dogs who were either really mild cases

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of separation anxiety or were going to get it anyway.

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They just needed a triggering event.

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When we come out of lockdown, the truth is the reality is the vast majority of dogs will

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be fine.

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They will be fine, but a good proportion won't be.

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So what can you do for the ones who are really going to struggle?

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Well, you're going to find the best possible alternative to the facing their fear exercise.

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So if we know that the best thing to do is allow dogs to gradually and safely face their

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fear, how can we recreate that when we're in quarantine, when we're in permanent lockdown?

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Let me give you some examples.

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Let me give you some things you can do that while they're not exactly home alone training,

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in some cases, they will be good enough to keep your dog in the home alone training game.

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First of all, try some out of sight exercises at home.

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So that's you going into different parts of the house where your dog can't see you.

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You could ideally pair that with a really nice relaxed down stay from your dog.

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What I want you to make sure here is that you don't just shut doors on dogs and let

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them scream.

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Don't shut the door on your dog and let them panic on the other side of the door, even

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if that's an internal door, because that's not enabling them to face their fear safely.

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Remember, we want to turn the intensity of the feared thing right down in order for this

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training to work.

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So just work on that.

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And if you need to break it down into stages, do that.

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It might be that you briefly close the door.

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It might be that you pull the door towards you, but don't close it.

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So work out what your dog can do now without panicking, but do try some out of sight exercises.

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Then you can try what I call the door's a ball game.

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This is where we ball the pants off our dogs by going to the main exit door over and over

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and over until the dog goes, Oh, what is she doing?

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That is so boring.

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The door is a ball.

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You're just going to teach your dog that when you go to the door, nothing exciting happens.

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He's not coming with you for a walk.

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You're not going out anywhere.

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Nothing to see here.

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We're actually looking for a response where the dog goes, Oh, she's just, what is she

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doing?

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She's gone crazy.

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She's playing in this door thing.

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And they, once they start getting that reaction, it means that they're realizing that the door

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isn't necessarily something to either be worried about or get really excited about.

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So the door's a ball game.

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Then you can work on pre-departure cues.

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This is another thing you can have a go at.

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When I teach home alone training, I don't use, or I don't introduce cues into the training

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until we've got really nice duration.

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However, this is an ideal time to just work on cues because you can't necessarily, you

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might not be able to do duration, but you might be able to work on cues.

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With cues, you're thinking about things that upset your dog before you leave.

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It might be putting on your coat.

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It might be getting your shoes out of the cupboard.

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It might be picking up bags or purses and you would show your dog, there's nothing scary

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here.

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It's fine.

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And you do that by just gradually, remember, keep it gradual, gradually showing your dog

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that these things are okay.

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So for example, if putting on your coat makes your dog freak out, you might just approach

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the coat hook and repeat that.

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Then you might take the coat off the coat hook and repeat, repeat, repeat.

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That way your dog starts to realize that these things that used to be scary are really nothing

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at all.

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Bit like with the door is a ball.

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It's just showing your dog that these things, you know what, they're no big deal.

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It's all good.

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But finally, if you can actually get out of the door, if you're allowed to stand on the

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other side of your door, I know for some people who live in apartments or flats, you're

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not actually allowed to stand on the other side of the door.

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But if you can, then you can do full blown home alone training because all you need to

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be able to do is stand on the other side of the main exit door.

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And if you can do that, you can do home alone training.

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And I tell you what, I really hope that if you can do full home alone training, that

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you're making the most of doing that right now.

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Because the last thing I want is for you to go back to work and say, oh, I wish I'd

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done more training.

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I wish I'd taken advantage of that time.

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Make sure you're not going to kick yourself in whatever period of time when things do

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start to get back to normal.

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So will any of these things guarantee that your dog isn't going to freak out when you

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go back to work?

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No, not necessarily, but they are the best chance you've got to make sure that your dog

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doesn't fall apart.

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And you don't need to invest a ton of time in any of these exercises.

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Just a few minutes a few times a week would be fine.

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It might be tricky.

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I do understand that for those of you with big families or with housemates, roommates,

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it's going to be trickier because what you're going to do, you're going to go and stand

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on the other side of the door.

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If that's you, do more of the stuff around the house, do the out of sight, do the going

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to the door and coming back.

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And then maybe one day when family are doing their daily exercise, just say, you know what,

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I'm going to hang back today and I'm going to do some actual home alone training.

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Maybe do that a couple of times a week, pair that with a few of the other activities like

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the out of sight, like the doors of ballgame and bingo, you are really going to create

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some fabulous foundations for your dog.

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Okay, that's it from me this week.

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I really hope that you and your dog are doing okay during this very difficult time.

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And I hope these few exercises will be helpful.

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The last thing I want is for everything to fall apart for you and that when everybody

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else gets their freedom back after lockdown, your freedom is still restricted by a dog

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who's freaking out.

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All right, I'll catch you on the next episode.

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Thank you so much for listening today.

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Do stay safe out there and I'll see you soon.

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Thank you for listening to the Fixing Separation Anxiety Podcast with Julie Naismith.

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For more information, visit our website at www.subthresholdtraining.com.

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If you haven't yet, go to Apple Podcasts and subscribe, rate and review this podcast.

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Thank you for joining us.

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We'll see you again soon.