Separation anxiety in dogs arises when they are away from people they are attached to. Despite training your canine, you may wonder, “why is my dog digging holes all of a sudden” or displaying destructive traits. These often extreme escape attempts may result in your pet causing self-injuries.
The top indicators of separation anxiety are your furry pet getting agitated when you are preparing to leave or preventing you from departing the premises. Soon after you leave them, they may resort to barking and other distress behavior. On your arrival, canines with separation anxiety behave like they have not seen you in years.
Separation Anxiety Induced Dog Behavior
As a dog owner, you may unknowingly encourage separation anxiety in your pet. When you leave and return, making a big fuss provokes your loyal companion to stress out in your absence. Instead of your pet experiencing fear when left alone, gradually initiating them to tolerate being away from you should break the habit.
The common behavioral traits that dogs display on experiencing separation anxiety occur in the owner’s absence. Watch out for the enumerated telltale signs:
Persistent Barking and Howling
Your canine howling and barking persistently when separated from you is a typical reaction, especially if your four-legged companion is otherwise pretty calm. You know where the problem lies when separation from the pet parent triggers such behavior.
Destructive Digging and Chewing
When your pet pooch is most attached to you than other family members, you may never witness their destructive tendencies. If you notice chewed household objects and dug-up sights on your return, wondering “why is my dog digging holes all of a sudden” is natural.
In the process of digging at doorways, chewing on, and destroying objects, your pet is likely to inflict self-injuries. Broken teeth, damaged nails, and scraped paws are the unpleasant consequences of such actions.
Urinating and Defecating
If you are your dog’s primary guardian and you notice them defecating or urinating indoors in your presence, concentrate on training them. Even if one of them soils your home when left alone, this behavior can be attributed to separation anxiety.
Fixed Pattern Pacing
Should your pooch pace around in a fixed pattern each time you are away, it indicates anxiety stemming from separation. Instruct the others at home to keep an eye on your pet’s movement. If they walk only in straight lines or stick to a circular pattern, you can pinpoint the cause of such fixed pacing behavior.
Escaping Tendencies
In an attempt to be with you, your dog may try escaping the area where you are confining it alone. Again, digging around exit points or chewing through them, whether windows or doors, are common anxiety traits. You may return to an injured canine or a destroyed interior owing to failed attempts made by your pet.
Consumption of Excreta
When separated from the pet parent, certain dogs may defecate and consume some or all their excrement. This trait is termed coprophagia and is not at all healthy. Those canines suffering from separation anxiety disorder indulge in such behavior in their owner’s absence.
Separation Anxiety Causes
Experts familiar with dog psychology have compiled a list of circumstances that invariably induce separation anxiety in your pet canine. These situations include:
- An abrupt schedule change like if you were operating from home and suddenly need to work from the office
- Change in the guardian, especially in the case of canines abandoned at shelters
- Absence of a resident family member because of relocation or untimely death
- Moving to a new living environment could also induce such anxiety
When your dog displays anxious behavior on being left alone, you need to calm its nerves.
Understand your canine’s psyche by referring to inputs shared by a passionate dog lover.
On the off chance that your canine appears to stress when you’re taking off, annihilates stuff when you take off from the house, follows you from one space to another when you’re home, goes wild when you return and is by all accounts peering toward you dubiously even before you leave—you might be managing an instance of partition nervousness.
Canines with partition nervousness display pain and conduct issues when they’re left alone. The absolute most normal ways they do this:
Burrowing and scratching at entryways or windows endeavoring to rejoin with their proprietors
Dangerous biting
Wailing, yelping and whimpering
Pee and poo (even with in any case house-prepared canines)
What causes partition uneasiness
It’s not completely comprehended why a few canines experience the ill effects of detachment uneasiness and others don’t. Yet, recall, your canine’s practices are essential for a frenzy reaction. Your canine isn’t attempting to rebuff you! They simply need you to get back home!
These are a portion of the situations that can trigger partition nervousness:
Being left alone interestingly.
Being left alone when acquainted with steady human contact.
Experiencing an awful mishap, for example, time away from you in a loading up pet hotel.
Change in the family’s daily schedule or structure, or the passing of a relative or other pet.
