I dreamt about having a dog pretty much my whole life. Any friend or family member of mine will tell you that I would never shut up about how much I wanted one. In December 2018 my dream finally came true when we picked up our little fur baby, Twinkle Bear. She’s even cuter than the name *.*
Having a dog for the first time was definitely harder than I imagined. The amount of attention they need, especially as puppies is a lot to handle. She turned our life upside down and I would be lying if I said I didn’t question our decision to get her at some points. However, we powered through and we now have the most adorable and loving little Bear.
Very early on we decided that we wanted to get a dog cam to check on her when we left the house. We had an idea that maybe she didn’t like being alone as she would follow us everywhere in the house and she would cry when we had to close off a room while we were cleaning. However, the dog cam revealed that she was in massive distress when she was on her own. She would bark, howl and cry consecutively until someone came home. Sometimes for hours on end! I can’t tell you how much that broke my heart. Even though we hired a dog walking company and had an amazing group of friends who checked on her regularly and took her on walks while we were at work, it still felt like we weren’t doing enough.
I may have shed a few tears watching her in distress, and inevitably this ended up having a huge impact on our social life as we would feel so guilty for leaving her alone that we would actively turn down any invitations to go out, and even stopped having date nights so we wouldn’t leave her alone more than we already had to.
After a couple of months we realised that we weren’t able to deal with the situation on our own and that we needed professional help. That’s when we hired a dog trainer. The trainer came to the house and asked us many questions about Twinkle's behaviour and gave us endless advice and tips to follow which we started implementing immediately. Hiring a dog trainer isn’t the cheapest thing in the world, so here I am sharing my knowledge with you so you can hopefully save some money and help your pup.
REDUCE AROUSAL
Before going to work we would always take Twinkle to the park and have her run around like crazy so that she could get tired and hopefully fall sleep while we were gone. This was the wrong technique. The dog trainer said that yes, we should go out with her before leaving the house, however, it should be a relaxed, non stimulated walk. If you don’t have time to go out with your dog, make sure you don’t excite them before leaving. They need to be in a relaxed state so that it’s not such a drastic change when you leave.
PUT YOUR SHOES ON
These next tips are a bit weird at first, but they are so effective! Twinkle would always chase us around the house whenever we moved from room to room. She would get particularly stressed if she saw us putting our shoes on as she would associate it with us leaving the house and her being alone. The dog trainer told us to start putting our shoes on at random times while we were at home, so we started doing that. We would be sat on the sofa watching TV and would get up, put our shoes on, walk around the house, take them off and sit back down on the sofa. Of course Twinkle would follow us in the beginning, but we would ignore her, and eventually she stopped going after us.
JIGGLE YOUR KEYS
Going hand in hand with what I wrote in the previous point, start jiggling your keys at random times. Say you’re cooking in the kitchen, pick up your keys, jiggle them and put them back down. Do this as often as you can, always ignoring your dog. They’re always looking for a reaction, even if you’re telling them ‘don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere’, they don’t know what it means. Just be very casual about it, pick up your keys and put them down as if it’s something normal to do.
WALK TO YOUR DOOR
I think you’re probably starting to see a theme here. Do things that indicate that you’re leaving the house but actually aren’t. Start walking to your door, your dog will follow you the first few times thinking you’re going to leave, but simply open the door, close it and go and sit back down on your sofa. Start doing all these things on their own in the beginning and with time, start incorporating all 3 things at the same time. Put your shoes on, pick up your keys, walk to the door, open it, close it and go back in the house as if nothing happened.
GET A NOVEL OBJECT
This one we didn’t actually use because we didn’t need it, but if you’re still struggling with your dog being stressed out, it’s worth a try. The dog trainer told us about getting a novel object, could be anything, but something new and something your dog has never seen in your house before. You’re meant to use it when you’re at home and you want to tell your dog that it isn’t play time. Dogs are used to having all the attention when their owners are at home, having this object ensures that they know when they have your time and when they don’t. Let’s say this object is a candlestick. You take it out at random times, and during these times you completely ignore your dog. This way, the dog knows that while this object is in sight, he/she won’t have your attention. So when you leave the house, you put this object out and your dog knows that he/she won’t have any play time.
I’m sure there are plenty more tactics out there, but these are the ones that really helped us and now Twinkle stays home by herself without being stressed. She no longer barks when she’s alone and she even falls asleep! That’s a miracle. She never used to sleep when she was home alone, no matter how tired she was. We’re honestly so happy that we went with a dog trainer, it really changed her life and ours. I hope you found this helpful if you’re also training your puppy.
If you have any other tips, feel free to share them below.
Lots of love, SFS.
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