Separation anxiety: could really use some guidance
Looking for advice from fellow whippet owners because we adore our girl and want to make sure we’re handling this the right way.
We adopted whippet about 3 months ago. She’s now 1 year 4 months old. By all accounts she had a good previous life, lived with other dogs, and is honestly an incredible dog in almost every way. Sweet, affectionate, amazing with our baby, playful, great recall, sleeps through the night in her crate without issue (which is in our bedroom), and overall has become such a loved part of our family.
She gets plenty of exercise: two solid walks a day, zoomies in the backyard, play, stimulation, etc
The one major issue: she absolutely hates being alone.
I work from home as a therapist, so she’s with me most of the day and just peacefully hangs out by my feet while I see clients on Zoom. Zero issues. Truly perfect.
But if my wife and I leave the house for dinner, ice cream, errands, etc., she completely falls apart.
If crated, she does this high-pitched hysterical whining/screaming the entire time (we know this because we have cameras in the house), destroys bedding/toys(if they’re in the crate), and occasionally stress-poops.
Because of this, I tried working on alone-time training while I’m home. During my morning workout, I’m in the garage (so technically home but out of sight), and I started crating her then for practice.
Problem is… after doing this consistently for the past couple weeks, it does not seem to be improving. She still cries the entire time, and afterward she seems completely dysregulated, frantic, weirdly clingy, and recently has started destroying things in the house if given access.
She sleeps happily in the crate overnight, so I don’t think the crate itself is the issue.
We’ve also tried putting her in a puppy-proof room instead, but same story: pacing, crying, obvious distress, looking for things to destroy.
So my question is:
Are we making this worse by continuing to rehearse this distress every day?
We had a session with a trainer who basically advised us to just stick with this strategy and eventually she would realize that crying and whining is not helpful for her and she would grow out of it (by the way I only let her out of her crate in these situations if she has stopped whining for at least several minutes so I do not reinforce the behavior).
I’ve tried giving her a frozen Kong in the crate as well, but she essentially ignores it in favor of crying.
Did anyone successfully work through this without their entire life revolving around ultra-intensive training protocols?
Would love practical advice that worked for you.