Avoid Separation with Preparation

It is easy when we are unexpectedly home with our dog to throw ourselves into lots of fun activities with the, but make sure they still get plenty of down time and on their own time. They do not have to be entertained all the time!

With a little thought and practice, you can prevent separation issues from arising. If you want to prevent this from even starting or have existing issues, I highly recommend you enroll in my training program.

While this COVID19 pandemic is going on, from your dog’s perspective there may be some upsides to lock-down. You are home pretty much all the time and they may well be getting more attention than usual. Even when all this is lifted or if this was not going on, it is important to have control of this situation anyhow. Your pup needs to know he/she will be OK and not to become frantic. It will save and prevent any unnecessary actions and feelings from occurring. Both you and your pup will be relieved of having any hassle, stress, money, bad or aggressive behavior, retaliation, damage to your property, clean up, punishment, etc.

This is great but it could potentially lead to having a problem with separation issues when all this is over, even if your dog has never had a problem with this before. So I am listing some pointers to avoid future separation distress while still enjoying this extra time with your dog.

The key to prevention is to make sure that you are not always available to your dog now. This may mean artificially creating distance at the moment.

Try to discourage your dog from following you around the house (as long as you are sure they are not already suffering from separation distress, if they are I can help you with some training). By discouraging, I don’t mean that you need to shoo them away, yell, or be aggressive. What you should do is if they do follow you, let them know that “Everything is ok”, in a sweet way, and that they can “go lay down”. After a few times they should realize that you are not abandoning them or that you are in any harms way. I know, my pup is basically attached to my hip and likes to make sure I am safe at all times so he comes to check on me a lot, but after he sees that all is ok and nothing is wrong with me, he knows he can go lay down or not be right on top of me (literally- Great Danes being giant lap dogs, lol).