Celia Haddon's Pets' Problems Page

DOGS THAT CAN'T BE LEFT ALONE IN THE HOUSE OR IN THE CAR

Dogs that trash the house (and sometimes the car) can cause hundreds of pounds worth of damage. Sometimes people find they can¹t ever leave their dog at home. Some even give up their work to stay at home with the dog. So it is worth spending the money to get expert help.

SYMPTOMS - usually only some of these.
When left alone, the dog tries to dig itself out or tries to chew its way out. Sometimes they urinate or defecate. Continuous barking or howling. Hysterical behaviour. Chewing things. Panting, salivating, sometimes even bleeding from wounds to paws and gums, highly distressed.

Never Punish on your return. It won¹t work. The dog won¹t know why it is being punished. It may look guilty, but that guilty look is the look of a dog that thinks it might be punished though it doesn¹t know why. All the dog will learn is that when its owner returns, it clobbers it. If the dog is suffering distress from being left alone, it will make it more anxious and more distressed.

Nowadays there is drug treatment available from the vet, but it will only work for some cases. Everything depends on getting the diagnosis right. A booklet on the subject is Diagnosis and Treatment of Separation Related Disorders in the Dog by Peter Neville, £3.99 from COAPE, PO Box 6, Fortrose, Ross-Shire, IV10 8WB There is also a leaflet Destructive Behaviour for an sae from the NCDL, 17 Wakley St, London EC1V 7RQ

What is going on?
There are several possibilities and they require different treatment.

a. The dog is bored and frustrated being left alone and is chewing things (and thus destroying things like cushion) because chewing is something a normal dog enjoys doing.
b. The dog is relatively calm but it is trying to get back its owner and occupy itself by barking. In its own mind, if it keeps barking the owner will return and bingo, that is what happens after three hours! So the dog learns that its barking is successful as long as it persists long enough.
c. The dog is suffering from separation distress at being abandoned by its owner. It is full of abandonment anxiety. It associates the house with its panic and tries to escape by getting out of the room, or out of the house. In the course of this attempt it chews up doors, door posts, carpets etc. The destruction is often in the direction where the owner left the house.
d. The dog is feeling fear, terrified of something in the house and, when its safety person is absent tries to escape that thing. It may try to leave the room or it may try to dig its way into the sofa going to ground in a den. Thus a dog, left in the kitchen where the click of a central heating boiler makes an odd noise, tries to escape into the bedroom destroying the kitchen door in the process. (During the day the click happens, but the dog isn¹t locked in the kitchen so it just runs away and hides under the bed or sits near its owner, who doesn¹t notice what is going on.)

Occasionally fear of being alone is set off by a trauma such as a thunder storm or an attempted burglary, after which the dog does not feel safe alone.

How can you tell what is going on?

Video it. Or find a pet behaviour counsellor who can do this for you. Contact the Centre for Applied Pet Ethology or Association of Pet Behaviour Counsellors.

Clomicalm is a drug given to dogs who are distressed or anxious when their owners leave. There¹s normally not much point just giving it without doing anything else. Given with some behaviour therapy it will help in some cases, not in others.

For very mild cases, when a dog isn¹t panicking too much, it may be worth a bit of self help.
1. Get the dog interested in a strong foraging toy like a Kong, Bustercube, Havvaball (Crosskeys 02085903604), Rhino or Activity ball (all from good pet shops) or a raw (never cooked) meaty bone. This dog is never EVER going to get either toys or bone EXCEPT when it is being trained to withstand absence. So keep toys etc out of sight all the rest of the time. To make a Kong or Rhino really good stuff it with cheese. Use tasty dry treats of dry food nuggets with Bustercubes, Havvaballs and Activity balls. This has got to be GOOOD.
2. Decide on an area to leave the dog such as an indoor mesh kennel perhaps or even (just for the start of this) on a tether. Make sure the tether will do no harm if chewed. Put the dog into the crate with its toy or bone or tether it and give the toy or bone
3. Put up a sign such as some wind chimes or an unusual item not seen otherwise in the house. The point is that the chimes are a signal to the dog that there is going to be a time-out period. When not in use they must be put away out of sight.
4. Still in the same room as the dog, give the Toy, put the dog in crate (or on tether, and THEN put up the signal. The order is important. Next ignore the dog. Do not look at it at all or touch it WHATEVER it does. Read a book and turn your whole body away from the dog.
5. Then, when the ignoring time is over, take down the signal, then (only then) feel free to untether the dog, take out of indoor kennel, take away toy or bone. Only don¹t make a big deal out of it. No greeting, no petting, just normal life resumes. To begin with you may do this ignoring only for a few minutes, because you have to take down the sign at a time WHEN THE DOG IS NOT REACTING OR HOWLING OR WHATEVER. If the dog is reacting, you must not take down the sign until it stops. Keep the times very very short so it doesn¹t even start to react. The dog has to learn that the signal only gets taken down when it is quiet.
6. IF YOU ONCE AND ONLY ONCE GIVE THE DOG ATTENTION WHEN THE SIGNAL IS UP, you will have undone all the good work so far. You will have to start right at the beginning again and it will be much more difficult.
7. Increase times of ignoring slowly, each time making sure that you only take down the signal when the dog is quiet. Then, put up the signal and walk out of room and walk back almost immediately, take down the signal. Then go out for a few seconds. Then minutes. Then open front door and turn back immediately. Then a few seconds out of the house and come back. Then a minute and come back. Each time the same sequence -- put dog into crate with toy (or on tether with toy) and put up the signal. The dog has no attention at until the signal is removed. It learns that when the signal is up there will be no attention at all. Only when the signal is taken down, does it get attention.

8. Slowly increase absences. This retraining is difficult to achieve so you may need help from a pet behaviour counsellor, see links to COAPE or APBC above.

Note, if you have a dog that wrecks the car, start by retraining in the house using the wind chimes signal, then when this is established, move them into the car when you are leaving the dog in it. And go back to no 4 onwards adapting the system to the car rather than the house.