r/Separation_Anxiety

Parents and I rehomed a poodle cocker-spaniel mix, she’s a sweetheart. 1 year old. Previous owners did not tell us she had separation anxiety, did not even mention it.

We come to find out ourselves. She will howl and cry relentlessly for hours and jump on furniture.

We have rearranged our lives for her completely. We really can’t go anywhere as a family now unless she comes.

She came with a crate but she genuinely hates it, she tries to escape it and we got scared that she’ll reach a point of injury so we don’t put her in it anymore.

I read medication could help but our vet denied her because of her age, that she is too young. Has this been the case for other people? He recommended I try calming supplements like CBD- I guess I can give it a try?
Has anyone else? Has it worked despite not being medicated?

I have done training sessions with her but I’ll be frank- it isn’t realistic for us to do it as intensely as I’ve been told to do. Max hours she’s been alone is like 3.

Just don’t know what to do, kinda feel at a loss that the vet denied her for medication.

Saw a few posts this week from people in the early stages of SA and it took me right back to where I was 6 months ago. Honestly, half the reason I got through it at all was reading on subs at 11pm reading other people's stories and not feeling completely insane. Feeling the least I could do is post mine in case it helps even one person.

Quick context: my girl, Lucy, is an 18 month old Cockapoo and apparently the breed is prone to anxiety, which nobody told us before we got her. She's had SA since literally the week we brought her home as a puppy. Had never experienced SA before and was honestly panicked from the start. 18 months and many learnings later I'm happy to be at a point where I can hopefully help others.

Things I wish someone had told me earlier:

Starting with probably my biggest mistake:
Stop trying to piece it together from random tips. I spent months stitching advice together from blogs and YouTube and it was a mess. Find a protocol/system that can guide you, and you can stick to without overthinking.
Used Julie Naismith's book "Be Right Back" and the SA system from Settled Tail. I see Julie recommended a lot here (rightly so) but Settled Tail doesn't come up much and it was one of the things that helped us a lot. 

Don't make a big deal when you come home. I know this sounds counterintuitive but the excited greetings were making her departure anxiety worse. Calm hello, ignore her for a few minutes, then affection.

The "tire them out" advice was definitely wrong for us. An overtired dog is often more anxious, not less. 

Start absences in seconds, not minutes. Like literally 10 seconds behind a closed door. Feels stupid, works. Expand the absence time from their threshold. Every time I tried to skip ahead we ended up two steps back.

Desensitize the keys, shoes, and bag stuff first. Lucy was already in panic mode before I touched the door because of all the cues that came before.

Track every session. Progress is so slow day to day that you'll convince yourself nothing is working - it just takes time. (Probably the most frustrating part..)

Lucy's not 100%. But I can leave for 4-ish hours now (fine for my work) without her losing it and 6 months ago that felt impossible. Feel like we're going to make it without having to get her on medication which I'm very happy about (I know medication is very helpful/needed for others, just saying)

Happy to answer anyone with questions and hang in there!

We've been doing desensitization training & all other types of trainning trying to address our dog's anxiety / isolation anxiety for almost a year. She is a 2-year-old rescue mix with general anxiety (afraid of the car & vet) and isolation anxiety which at it's worst presents via barking & howling but these days is mostly just panicked movements around the house (we haven't let to her get to the barking stage in a really long time, I'm not even sure she would still do it). When we adopted her we had no idea what we were getting into, but we loved her and we were ready to strap in and put in the time to address this. We found a trainer, started the protocol, did everything right. At one point she was holding for close to 45 min.

Then we pushed too far too many days in a row (we got over excited at her progress) and since then we have watched months of really hard work basically come apart. She's back down to a threshhold of like 4-5 minutes, and the past 2 months of training I haven't seen much improvement upon this despite people's notes that dogs who regress bounce back quickly.

I think what I'm sitting with right now is: maybe we can't cure this. The amount of energy we've put into this - daily trainings, obsessive research, coordinating schedules, finding sitters, testing daycares, canceling & rearranging plans, spending tons of $$$ — has been genuinely and truly exhausting. I was happy to do this when we saw progress each month, feeling like it was all getting us to our end goal, however slow. But I never would have guessed that 1 year later we would be at only 4 minutes...It feels like we have tried everything to help our dog and nothing is working. Our friends think we're a little crazy, and I'm starting to wonder if we are crazy too. And the hardest part is that after all of it, her progress turned out to be so fragile - like any bad day could upsend it. Do I recommit to all this hard work even when months of effort can just be decimated with 1 or 2 bad sessions? I can't control everything.

We are hopeful since we just started working with a vet behaviorist & are going to try a new trainer & a new cocktail of meds for her (she was on prozac for a while which did work for a bit, but now we're putting her on sertraline + a situational med). But I am also skeptical since meds have not been a silver bullet for us in the past. We've discussed rehoming her this devestating to think of - she is the BEST dog besides this, and we truly love her and she loves us. Rehoming would be traumatizing for both of us (more traumatizing than a 40 min absence here and there), and I'm not sure we could find the right set up for her. I feel like we would consider a 2nd dog before this.

I have hope for our next steps but as a backup I'm genuinely curious: has anyone gotten to this point and just... stopped trying so hard to control this? I can keep doing the formal training sessions, and if I'm out for a long stretch I'll absolutely still get a sitter. What I can't keep doing is coordinating one every time I need to run out for 30-60 minutes. For context, she's not destructive, at worst she'd bark and disturb the neighbors, which was our biggest concern when we started all of this. It's funny (not funny) that what once felt like an urgent problem now seems so small given how much we've upended our lives trying to fix it. Have people found a way to just live, accepting that the dog might struggle during short unplanned absences? Is that a real path?

Would really love to hear from anyone who's been at this long-term and found some version of peace with it, whatever that looked like.

I am seriously considering getting this guy, so I can at least go to the supermarket by myself again, like I used to…..actually go out and have somewhat of a life again. Has anyone tried this?

https://youtu.be/p5vTF8eH\_CM?si=dqPTwx0RFU\_PtOJ3

Thanks for sharing any experiences!

Hi everyone! Has anyone experienced something like this with separation anxiety—or could it be something else entirely?

I have a dog who’s a little over 2 years old. I got him from a breeder, and he’s been with me since he was 8 weeks old. We live in a house with a yard, and he spends a lot of time outside—he absolutely loves being out there. In the yard, he’s perfectly fine on his own. He mostly just sleeps and can easily be left alone out there for the whole day, whether we’re inside the house or even away from home. He doesn’t show any signs of separation anxiety outside.

However, inside the house it’s a completely different story. We can’t leave him alone indoors because he barks, whines, sits by the door, and after a while starts scratching it. This only happens when he’s inside the house, and he doesn’t settle down at all if we leave.

If this were separation anxiety, wouldn’t he also struggle being alone outside? Is it possible for a dog to show signs of separation anxiety only when inside the house?

What’s interesting is that indoors, if we’re home and just close him out of a room, he’s totally fine—he’ll calmly lie down and sleep. So being alone in a different room inside doesn’t seem to be an issue for him either.

After long discussion with my parents on my dog’s needs and advocating for her, I got us all on the same page for the majority. They’ll be helpful with me in terms of coordinating around not leaving my dog alone, and also with even contributing to doggy daycare since we just got her 2 months ago (rehomed her). However, with the training and pouring money into that, I know it’ll be on me, and I’ve accepted that that’s okay.

So now that I have help with making sure she isn’t alone, where do I even start with training?

I just feel lost. Can I try and do this alone, or hire a trainer?

My vet denied her meds, and I am considering going to get a second opinion but I want to start training again (I did before but stopped) and see how far I can get progression wise.

She doesn’t like her crate. I see people say crate train first. She isn’t destructive so it’s not a necessity in my opinion, she does better free roaming.

Do I need to pay money for these training packages like Naismith?

I’d just love a starting point and how to buildup from there.

Hi guys,
I have an adult dog, poodle who has been very g attached since day one. Didn’t help that we were remote during his puppyhood. Eventually he did get better at being home alone once we had to go into the office. He never got the the point where he was completely unaffected by being home alone. He’s a howler, doesn’t destruct, roams free since day one. But he was somewhat okay with occasional howl here and there. Then we had a baby and I stayed home for a year and this just made him even more of a mess. New neighbors don’t tolerate his screams. And he starts howling right away. I can’t leave the house unless I have someone to watch him. Day care costs add up so I only can do it once in a while.
Started reconcile 4 weeks ago and started testing chlonodine this week.
So far I tested the combo a few times and he did well, some whining by the door but no howling, expect for one time. I only tested for 20-30 mins. Felt good about it and decided to leave the house for real, left the key to the friend in case he howls. I think he got triggered by the way I was getting ready, packed baby’s bags and so on vs just stepping out when I was testing the meds. And he started howling immediately. Luckily my friend could go get him.
I do work on desensitization as well but with a baby it’s hard to do it all at 100%. I put a lot of hope in the medication and would love to hear success or failure stories

Thank you

My puppy is almost 1 year old, and we’ve had her since she was 8 weeks. Her alone-time training has been really up and down, and I’m starting to feel frustrated, helpless, and honestly a little defeated.

When she was a baby, she was very scared of us leaving. But by around 4 to 5 months old, we were able to leave her in her crate for about 2 to 3 hours.

Around 7 months, we started slowly training her to free roam while we were gone, and we eventually built that up to about 2 hours.

Then around 9 months, she regressed back to only being able to handle about 30 minutes. We slowly rebuilt her tolerance again and got back to around 2 hours, always with a lot of exercise beforehand. Even then, some sessions were still wobbly, like she would wake up from a nap and start barking.

We got her spayed around 11 months old, and now she’s about 3 weeks post-op. Since then, she hasn’t been able to handle even 30 minutes of alone time. I first started with her normal alone time routine (free roaming but realized she would bark constantly, jumps up and down from my bed, and keep checking the door), and now we are back to crating her…

The constant regression is really getting to me. It makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong or like I’m failing her. It’s also really hard to have a normal life when we feel like we can’t leave because of the barking. We live in an apartment where noise travels easily, so that adds another layer of stress.

I’m not sure what to do anymore, like do I just let her bark it out? I don’t even know if this is true separation anxiety or just a rough regression period, and I don’t want to sound ungrateful because I know many people have it worse. But I’m really struggling.

Has anyone dealt with repeated regressions like this? Any advice, reassurance, or training tips would be really appreciated.

This isn’t a separation specific question, more on the general anxiety side.

Does anyone else have a power chewer? Our guy loves soft toys to chew to self soothe when he’s winding down, however NOTHING lasts. He doesn’t like hard or rubbery toys for these specific times so those don’t suffice and I am so sick of spending a small fortune on toys that literally end up in the bin within 15 mins of him having them.

Does anyone have any recommendations?