Anxiety separation

[M SALEEM]

A dog trainer has suggested not to have an over excited and hyped up greeting with your puppy when you arrive home because this kind of behaviour can lead to more separation anxiety when you leave them alone at home.  Is this true? I’d like to know your views on this as I love greeting my puppy and enjoy encouraging him to release the happy hormones

[Adrienne Farricelli]

Hi there!

This is a very good question, the answer to this though is not super easy as we may need a little more research. 

So basically, it boils down to this:

Many trainers and behavior professionals have advised not to make a great deal of greeting dogs when coming back home due to the fact that it may increase the saliency of our presence. In other words, if we party with our dogs when we come back home, it makes things appear dull when we are away and super fun when we come back creating too much contrast between our absence and presence. 

This belief has likely stemmed from some studies. McGreevy and Masters (2008) found that dogs that engaged in game playing with their owner in the first 30 minutes of the owner arriving home was correlated with higher separation-related behavior scores. 

Appleby and Pluijmakers (2004), further suggested that leaving and returning rituals of owners can reinforce anxiety. 

This has led to the common recommendation of ignoring the dog before departures or on arrival, and only interacting with the dog when calm (King et al., 2000)

Ignoring the dog has therefore often been recommended to produce, “low arousal” departures and arrivals from the home, for the purpose of creating a calm environment before and after owner absence (e.g. Schwartz, 2003). 

However, correlation does not imply causation. According to a recent study, the results QUOTED "indicate that high excitement and playful levels of owners during departures and arrivals is not associated with the development of increased separation-related behavior in newly adopted dogs. 

It is important to make the distinction, however, that low arousal departures and arrivals are a well-documented treatment for separation-related behavior, and our results only reflect that these arousal levels do not appear to play a causal role in the development of an increased frequency of them."

"Based on the results of this study, intensity of departures and greetings may not be correlated with separation anxiety, and it may not be necessary to advise owners to ignore their dog when leaving and returning home; however, further research including video-recorded observation of newly adopted dogs when owners leave and return—is warranted," points out veterinary behaviorist Dr. Katherine A. Houpt.

Here is a link to this latest study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1558787820300460?via%3Dihub

[M SALEEM]

Thank you Adrienne for getting back to me so quickly. I see what you mean by it’s not easy to answer this as there is some quite contradictory research.  I just love seeing Teddy so happy and excited when I get home, I can’t resist his kisses and hugs!  I just hope that this isn’t going to cause him to have more separation anxiety than he would have had anyway.  I have read that Maltipoo breads suffer from separation anxiety.  The first couple of nights when we first got him at the age of 11 weeks, he would cry for 2-3 hours after being put to bed downstairs in the crate, he would cry so loudly that we could hear him upstairs, so then we moved the crate into the corner of our bedroom and it did the trick - we didn’t hear a squeak from him, he was so calm and slept through the entire night without any anxiety.  Teddy is now nearly 5 months old, should we just continue to keep him in the crate in bedroom (I don’t mind) or are we supposed to get him used to being on his own and bring the crate back downstairs? It doesn’t cause us any problems having his crate in the bedroom at night but I don’t want to form any bad habits if it’s not healthy for Teddy if you know what I mean

[Adrienne Farricelli]

I perfectly understand your concerns, they are very valid, especially with the surge of separation anxiety cases associated with the pandemic and owners staying at home more and then suddenly going to work.

 It has been estimated that separation anxiety affects 20 to 40 percent of dogs referred to North American animal behavior practices and these numbers may be higher now.

However, although widespread, separation anxiety in dogs isn't always diagnosed correctly. There are several cases that may mimic separation anxiety, when in reality dogs are affected by something else. 

Board-certified veterinary behaviorist Dr. Meredith Stepita in her series of articles on Separation Anxiety: the Great Imitator, lists several other causes of behavior that might be confused for separation anxiety. Therefore there are chances that many dogs that show signs of separation anxiety may be dealing with something else. 

When true cases of separation anxiety though appear, we are often left to wonder what may have precipitated its onset. 

Research from veterinarian Gerrard Flannigan, board-certified veterinary behaviorist Dr. Nicholas H. Dodman lists several potential causes that may not be exclusive and that may even overlap. 

Several potential causes of separation anxiety in dogs listed include the following:

• Enduring a traumatic experience when the dog is left alone
• Formation of a pathological attachment to the the owner 
• Changes in family circumstances (divorce)
• Genetic predispositions 

Dog separation anxiety specialist Dr. Malena De Martini, in her book: "Treating Separation Anxiety in Dogs" adds several other contributing factors. 

• Dogs with a history of being rehomed multiple times
• Illness during puppyhood 
• A dog never being left alone
• The loss of a family member (human or animal)
• Moving to a new home
• Owners being at home most of the time and then suddenly starting to work (as it has happened during the pandemic)
• Noise phobias 
• Old age 

There's not much research done to see whether there is a possible correlation between dogs sleeping in the same room with their owners and the onset of separation anxiety. We do have though some research about dogs sleeping on the owner's bed, which has prompted the advice of not letting dogs share the bed due to this risk for separation anxiety.  

The advice of not letting a dog sleep on the bed due to the risk for the onset of separation anxiety is something that has been promulgated by several books, online articles and dog trainers. This belief has likely stemmed from the fear of dogs developing a dysfunctional  hyper attachment to their owners due to the closeness when sharing the bed may bring. 

If we think about this closely, this advice doesn't sound too off the mark. After all, the formation of a pathological attachment to the owner is listed as a contributing factor, which makes us wonder whether sleeping on the bed may create a too strong bond and codependency.

Can sleeping on the bed cause dogs to become so bonded to their owners that being left alone becomes intolerable?

Research by veterinarian Gerrard Flannigan and board-certified veterinary behaviorist Dr. Nicholas H. Dodman clearly state that activities associated with spoiling dogs such as allowing the dog on the bed or feeding the dog from the table were not found to be linked with separation anxiety in dogs. You can access this research here (there is a download available for the full text).

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11827860_Risk_factors_and_behaviors_associated_with_separation_anxiety_in_dogs

This overall appears to be good news for owners of dogs who love to cuddle and share their bed with a furry companion. However, the research also revealed that dogs with separation anxiety were found to be particularly clingy, being 3 times more likely to follow their owner excessively and being almost 4 times more likely to exhibit excited greeting behaviors lasting over 2 to 3 minutes.

What does this potentially insinuate? It insinuates that, if your dog sleeps in bed with you and follows you around all day long, struggling when you're in another room to the point that you can't even use the restroom in private, he may benefit from learning to become more independent and part of that may include teaching him to sleep on his own bed.

After all, this makes sense, if a dog can't tolerate being away from us for even a second, how can we expect them to to tolerate being left alone a couple of hours when we need to buy groceries or even 6 to 9 hours when we have to go to work?

This though doesn't mean letting our dogs sleep in a cold basement all alone.

 It just means that one should aim to gradually work on fostering in the dog more independence by initially letting him learn to sleep on his bed/crate on the floor and if one desires, the bed/crate can be gradually moved further away. Of course, this is done very gradually without causing stress. 

Owners of such dogs may also want to take steps to teach the dog to be less clingy. Several tips on how to accomplish this can be found in this article: https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/members/archive/general-guidelines-for-clingy-dogs-dogs-with-separation-anxiety/

So in your case, I guess in the big scheme of things, the big question is: how is Teddy doing over all? Have you ever recorded his behavior when you leave the home? Looking at the video can give you an insight on how Teddy is really doing when left alone. Generally at the age of 5 months, pups are prone to becoming more independent compared to the prior months when they used to shadow us and possibly cry when being left alone.