 Barked: Thu Jan 31, '13 10:56pm PST |
 | |  | | If it's separation anxiety, I would say the anxiety itself needs to be addressed. Crate training with separation anxiety is more of a bandaid for destruction rather than a fix for the anxiousness that comes from the owner being away. Indeed, when we talked to a couple of behaviorists about Zim's separation anxiety and all the troubles we'd had with crate training him (still screamed unholy murder when the door closed after having been fed in it for a month, progressing to shutting the door causing him to refuse to go fully going into, never being in it without a Kong and treats but still screaming for 6-8 straight if tough love was tried, etc), we were told that was very common with separation anxiety dogs and that if we wanted to crate train our own dog, we'd have to use a sedative to get him to a place where he could be counter-conditioned. So maybe he gave up too soon and maybe it was another aspect of the separation anxiety.
Behavior modification, such as special toys/food she only gets when your roommate is away is the route we took and not letting him get over his threshold so he wasn't so anxious he couldn't learn from it, was the route we took. Between that and a Thundershirt, we've left Zim alone for up to six hours with no problems (although we generally use daycare to void leaving him alone more than 2-4 hours). |  |  | |  |
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