Separation anxiety is one of the most demanding behavior challenges for families. It touches every part of daily life, including work schedules, home routines, and relationships. It can make even the strongest bonds feel stretched thin.

When you’re in the thick of separation anxiety, something that often gets overlooked: recovery is not only about training protocols. Sometimes, healing comes from something as simple and profound as playing together.

Finding out that your dog is struggling with separation anxiety can feel overwhelming. Many guardians already carry the emotional weight of knowing their dog is suffering and not knowing how to help. That weight often increases once you start looking for solutions and see how much conflicting advice is out there, which makes it hard to know where to begin.

Here are the top three things we recommend prioritizing if your dog has separation anxiety. If you implement these changes immediately, you’re well on your way to helping your dog feel better about being left home alone.

In separation anxiety training, our goal is to collect data so we can assess two things:

1. The trend and trajectory of your dog’s progress.

2. The variables in your dog’s life and environment that could be affecting their ability to maintain upward progress.

So how do we go about tracking this data, and how can it help our training efforts?

Let’s talk about thresholds. If your dog is struggling with separation anxiety, your understanding of thresholds is absolutely paramount. It’s the baseline of knowledge you’ll need to create true, lasting behavior change. It’s the foundation upon which a separation anxiety training plan is built. Without it, we’re spinning our wheels and potentially making our dogs feel worse.

Avoid the most common mistakes that might make your dog’s separation anxiety worse (and find out what helps instead). The pitfalls of repeating these misguided behaviors are great; you take a giant step backwards in your training plan each time you do.

Here you will find a list of resources to assist you in deciding if you wish to speak with your veterinarian about medication(s) that may support your behavior modification efforts.

Please note that only your veterinarian or veterinary behaviorist can advise on whether prescription medications are appropriate for your dog. We are not veterinarians and will not advise as such.

While you will see quite a lot of ‘do this’ and ‘don’t do that’ when it comes to dog training on social media, please keep in mind that it’s critical that we always adhere to nuance and viewing your dog as an individual.

Transparency about the separation anxiety training process helps set expectations for the reality to come. These are a few points that we feel it is important for guardians to be aware of before they commit to an alone time training protocol.

Setting goals in a tiered framework gives you little “wins” to build upon in what can be a complex process. Each time you get out the door without your dog experiencing distress, it’s a win. And your are that much closer to reaching the next tier in the framework.

When it comes to separation anxiety training (and all dog training for that matter), the best trainers don’t need to be physically present to create lasting behavior change. This is because there is no magic in dog training. All that’s needed to teach your dog that being alone is safe are incremental plans, competent criteria-setting and body language literacy. To bring that to the table, all you need is a camera and a keyboard.

If you break a bone, your doctor will be able to tell you roughly how long it will take to heal. If you’re building a house, your contractor will know how many months before the job is complete. Unfortunately, resolving separation anxiety isn’t like that. Each dog’s trajectory is different. And recovery can be complicated.

There are only 3 steps in the separation anxiety protocol that has helped so many of our clients overcome alone-time struggles with their dogs. Sounds pretty simple, right? It is quite simple. But it’s not easy.

In the dog training world, the term management refers to an intervention that prevents the problem behavior from occurring. It’s the first order of business in any behavior modification plan.

It may come as a surprise to you that there are in fact different types of separation-related behaviors. Most people use “separation anxiety” as an umbrella term to describe a variety of undesirable behaviors that dogs exhibit when home alone. But it is actually much more discrete than that. Read on to learn more.

Separation anxiety, like most things in life, is multi-faceted and complex. Unfortunately, there is no panacea to cure it, as many popular quick-fix tips and myths have led well-meaning dog owners to believe.