u/Flat_Pollution8085

We have an 8 year old golden retriever who has always been a very sweet and chill dog, beloved by all who meet him. We moved a few times in the last two years, and about 3 months after moving into our current home he developed extreme separation anxiety. Every time we try to fall asleep (or sometimes when we just try to watch tv), he barks.

He has been to multiple vets and behavioral specialists and is on high doses of basically every possible sedative and anxiety medication, but all they seem to do is make him groggy. He still won’t let us sleep at night. He does have neurological problems, but the vets don’t seem to think this is related to those issues or dementia, though it is more difficult to rule out dementia given his other health and anxiety issues.

We haven’t gotten more than 3 hours of consecutive sleep more than maybe three times since November, and we don’t know what conditions lead to these days of good sleep. He is slightly better at sleeping if someone sleeps on the couch downstairs, but still tends to wake up at least once in the middle of the night, and having someone sleeping on the couch constantly is not ideal. He also pees when left alone for more than an hour or so during the day, even if he has been let out many times before.

He seems to love going to boarding/doggy daycare, though the employees report that he follows them around all day asking for pets. They don’t have cameras, but it doesn’t seem like he has the same peeing or barking problems at the boarding place as he does at home. We’re starting to think he just hates our new house.

Will “capturing calmness” training help in this situation? Is there anything else we can do? No one seems to have any ideas besides medication, which we have already tried extensively.

Additional background:
- we thought he was afraid of the dark, but leaving lights on only seemed to help temporarily, and now makes no difference
- he freaks out at the sound of the heat turning on, so we have made the house as cold as we reasonably can in an effort to keep the heat off, but this hasn’t fixed it either and he will wake up anyway
- the issue seemed to get much worse after the kids came home from college for winter break and then left again. Originally, he would bark at my daughter in her room at night, but calm down in my room. He was also okay sleeping in my son’s bed, but he isn’t allowed on any of the other beds and has never tried to jump on them. During spring break my daughter slept on the couch next to him, and he woke up from 3-4am every night at a minimum.
- before the first move, he lived with a cat for his whole life and they got along fairly well, but these issues didn’t start happening until over a year after moving away, so we don’t think they can be attributed to missing his buddy.