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Separation anxiety and house training (new dog!)
LB
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
My family just adopted a 2-year old coonhound from the pound (history unknown). She's just adorable, and there are no serious problems with her, but she has shown some separation anxiety. Whenever either my father or his wife leave the house, she stays at the door and cries. So far, they have not left her alone because she gets so anxious when even one of them leaves. When one of them can't take a day off of work, my father brings her to his office, where his employees have offered to walk her on the hour.
Related to this is the fact that she is not house trained. We have a doggie door that our previous dogs used without any problem. So my questions are: how to deal with her separation anxiety, and how to house train her? I'd like to stress that she hasn't been ripping up the house or destroying the carpets or anything, but I'd like her not to be stressed out every time a family member leaves the house.
Related to this is the fact that she is not house trained. We have a doggie door that our previous dogs used without any problem. So my questions are: how to deal with her separation anxiety, and how to house train her? I'd like to stress that she hasn't been ripping up the house or destroying the carpets or anything, but I'd like her not to be stressed out every time a family member leaves the house.
LB on
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Sep anxiety
If you just adopted her, give it some time, if is was surrendered its still probably reeling from abandonement.
If it persists you can do somethings.
1. Don't make a huge deal about leaving, if its a large production it will build up anxiety
2. Distraction. we have always given our dog a treat ball or a stuffed kong when we left. this will keep them occupied whie you leave and associate you leaving with good stuff
3. training. leave the house for a short time. go back in and treat. keep repeating this but gradually increase the duration. make sure you are not rentering when she cries or else it will reinforce the crying
for the doggie door. when we first got ours, we taped the door part up so it was open and placed a person on each side with treats and just called our dog through it.
another good way is to have a dog that already uses it there to show it how its done
Is she not trained to use the doggie door or does she not understand that she is supposed to potty outside? (Or are you not sure which is the problem?)
If she doesn't know that she is supposed to potty outside, showing her how to use the doggy door isn't going to fix that problem. The basics of potty training are prevent accidents (take her outside frequently) and reward her when she goes outside and then slowly increase the amount of time between potty breaks.