My boy Bonzo does suffer from separation anxiety, he could cope when he was left with another dog. Since June 2023 he is now the only dog in the house, which in some ways he is doing really well. I've started working on helping him with this problem and thought I would give you an insight of the training and his progress.
As he likes to follow me around - yes that includes standing outside toilet door, it became apparent that my movement is VERY important to him. The first part of training was me doing "Purposeless Movement", this includes the following actions:-
Standing up, stretching, sitting back down
Standing up, moving a step or two and then sitting back down again
Going out of the room by a step or two, sitting down
By doing the above my movement is no longer as important to him as it was, I'm still working on the "Purposeless Movement" when he is in his pen area. I've not add any distance yet when he is in then pen.
When he's in the pen I'm keeping him occupied with a frozen bone, lickie mat, snuffle mat and other enrichment items. The frozen bones are made up of the following ingredients:-
Kibble soaked in bone broth or warm water
Small carrot chunks
Wet meat
Calming powder
Low fat Greek yoghurt
Let me know if you have a dog with a similar issue
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