Home Alone: Separation Issues

Some dogs are the world’s best companions and they are just perfect until it comes time for the owner to leave them alone. You may have heard of dogs who tear the house apart when separated from their owners.

Dogs with serious separation problems can engage in destruction that can be dangerous for the dog and costly for the owner.  In CITIZEN CANINE, we talked about separation issues.

Separation Anxiety, Separation Distress, Separation Behaviors

Separation Anxiety

You may have heard the term “separation anxiety.” For quite a while, this has been the term used to refer to dogs that have problems when left alone. Technically, anxiety is a term meaning that there are physiological changes in the animal, such as shortness of breath, heart palpitations, and increases in blood pressure and heart rate. There is also usually a certain amount of worrying and apprehension that goes along with the clinical definition of anxiety. A well-recognized type of anxiety with humans is test anxiety, where the person can panic to the point of trembling, feeling sick, and developing a migraine related to an upcoming final exam.

Because not all dogs that are left alone experience anxiety, animal behaviorists are beginning to use other terms including separation distress and separation behaviors.

Separation Distress

Distress is simply an animal’s inability to adapt to stress (or the conditions that are causing stress). In humans or animals, the result of distress is often maladaptive behaviors that include inappropriate urinating or defecating (toilet-trained children who are experiencing distress might wet the bed or wet their pants), making noise (dogs bark and whine while distressed children might cry), and destruction or aggression.

In many situations, separation distress is a more accurate term than separation anxiety.

Separation Behaviors

Some owners return home to discover toilet paper has been dragged from the bathroom all through the house and underwear is now strewn about the living room. A tornado went through the house? No, the dog was at it again. While you were gone, you’re certain your dog did a canine imitation of the Tom Cruise scene in the movie Risky Business in which he jumped on the coffee table and played a broom as if it were a guitar.

There are some differences of opinion about this, but when it comes to the topic of separation issues, some canine experts believe that there are times when the dog is neither anxious nor distressed when the owner leaves, and he is just having a good time with his mischievous behaviors. As in, if a video camera were rolling, you would see the dog sliding down the hall to Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll,” shouting, “Wait ’til they see this!”

The idea that some dogs get bored and start a party when their owners are gone is controversial. What we do know is what happened—there was toilet paper all around the house, shoes were chewed, and perhaps the dog urinated on the bed. These occurrences can all be accurately referred to as separation behaviors.

Even if you do believe that your dog’s separation behaviors are related to the dog’s being bored and finding something fun to do, it is never appropriate to punish a dog for what he has done while you were away.

What Really Happened?

Clearly, more research is needed in the area of separation issues. This is a problem often seen in rescue dogs and dogs that have been adopted from shelters. If your dog has separation problems and you can get videotape of the dog in action, actually being able to see what happened can help an animal behaviorist know how to best develop a plan of action.

In the next post, we’ll describe what you can do if your dog has separation issues.

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