Episode 4 – What is separation anxiety?

Hello and welcome to episode 4 of Animale Thérapie, the animal behaviour podcast. In this episode, we’re going to talk about separation anxiety and everything it refers to.

But first of all, I have to tell you that if you have a dog that you think is suffering from a form of separation anxiety, I recommend that you turn to reliable resources on the subject with certified professionals. In fact, I’ve created an entire illustrated e-book on the subject to give you a better understanding of the problem as a whole. If you think you might have a pooch in this situation, I can only recommend that you download this e-book free of charge.

If you’re here, it’s probably because, in one way or another, you think you have a dog with separation anxiety. Separation anxiety is a label. We talked about it just a short while ago in episode 2, and it’s what allows us to describe more quickly all the dogs who have problems related to loneliness. These problems are more of a spectrum. Not all separation anxiety, not all problems linked to loneliness are the same. You can have a dog who really can’t stand being on his own, but as long as there’s any other human around, there’s no problem, as long as there’s someone to accompany him. On the other hand, it’s perfectly possible to have a dog who feels anxious as soon as there’s a particular human who’s not with him. And it doesn’t matter how many or how good the other people are who are present and who are going to offer him interaction, he won’t be interested and he’s likely to behave in the way we see in separation anxiety.

So what is a dog with separation anxiety? It can take different forms, and the symptoms – because that’s what we call them – will vary depending on the dog, its personality and the way it experiences its emotions.

Because that’s what we’re talking about here. In the top three, we often have dogs that howl or bark non-stop, or sometimes simply at the departure of humans for long minutes, then it stops and comes back. We really have forms of vocalisation that are sometimes very intense, sometimes very upsetting for the neighbours, we can have destruction, with dogs that destroy absolutely everything. I’ve seen dogs with separation anxiety who destroy everything, right up to the wall, right up to the plasterboard, who really make holes in the wall, who rip up the parquet on the floor, who rip up everything, it doesn’t stop. In the category of destruction, you could also have a dog that moves things around, picks them up, brings them over, picks them up again, brings them back, maybe strips them down a bit, but in the end it’s still “light” destruction. But it’s still destruction.

And in the top three, we still have dogs who are messy, who will relieve themselves absolutely everywhere and literally redecorate the house, who may relieve themselves on the sofa, on the beds at such times. There may be a combination of all three, there may only be two symptoms, there may even be many more with other symptoms as well, but which are sometimes less problematic for humans, such as a dog that will simply run around the house without necessarily doing any damage, without necessarily howling, without necessarily being messy. You can also imagine having a dog that squeaks all the time you’re away. While this doesn’t really pose a problem for humans, it does pose a real concern for the dog’s well-being.

Separation anxiety is described as a genuine panic fear of solitude. It’s almost a phobia of being alone, a disorder linked to loneliness and which is particularly prevalent in dogs in our modern lifestyles. Because dogs are not made to live alone, it’s important to remember that a dog that doesn’t like to be alone is normal, even before considering it as a pathology or something else. In our way of life, they are subject to this learning process, which has to be acquired. Now, developing a real panic fear with all the symptomatic behaviours that can ensue, on the other hand, can really pose an animal welfare problem insofar as your dog will be exposed to constant, even chronic stress, and the behaviours are likely to get worse over time. Of course, the welfare issue isn’t just a problem for the dog, it’s also a problem for us as humans.

I have a dog who had separation anxiety for the first two years of his life, and he literally remade my house. I had to change sofas, I had to patch holes in the plasterboard, he was very destructive. He didn’t make a lot of noise or scream, but he did move around a lot. He was breathing very hard and there was a body language that made you think he was under intense stress and he was redecorating with a lot of destruction. And that’s often how you realise it because, of course, when you’re not in the house and you don’t have a camera, you don’t necessarily realise when it’s a tiny problem of the dog’s size. But on the other hand, when it starts to become symptomatic of behaviour that is material and leaves a trace when we return, then we can start to consider the fact that *maybe* (because it’s not always the case), there may be a separation anxiety problem, or in any case a problem linked to solitude itself.

Separation anxiety in our modern lifestyles is hugely represented. There are many dogs who will express some form of separation anxiety at some point in their lives. Will it pass? Will we succeed in preserving them or will it only get worse? Will the environment be favourable for these dogs at that time? That’s the story of each dog. But in any case, it’s also one of the best-studied and most widely published issues. The most important thing to remember is that separation anxiety is really a panic fear. In other words, the dog’s behaviour at the time is not voluntary. He’s not doing it to annoy us or to get back at us. He’s really in a state of panic and all the resulting behaviour is simply a symptom of this panic fear.

We’ll also have dogs, for example, who are trying to escape, so we’ll have this sensation that the dog opens all the doors, tries to open the windows, even learns to turn the keys. I’ve seen this too. Our dogs are extremely good at trying to find solutions to the problems they face in life. And so, in the end, we’re always going to have to find better and better solutions to keep the dog in conditions of relative safety, to prevent it escaping onto the road or being knocked down. And of course, this is something that can also happen when the dog is left alone in the garden and we’re not there, the dog tries to escape, and this can also be one of the symptoms of a problem managing solitude.

So, is separation anxiety something we’re going to have to live with for the rest of our dog’s life? Of course not! It’s perfectly possible to cope with it and have a calm and peaceful dog. On the other hand, you’re going to have to make some adjustments on a daily basis. Given that we’ve defined what loneliness-related disorders are. So we’ve clearly understood that the dog’s behaviour at the time is simply a manifestation of what he’s feeling. It’s a way of expressing its emotions, just as if we were angry. Some people can scream, some people can smash things up, some people can completely shut down, have a muted anger. Some people may go for a run to clear their head. In fact, our response to an emotion is different for everyone and there’s absolutely no way of controlling it. So you really have to take it for what it is: a symptom.

And knowing that, we’re not going to be interested in managing the symptoms at all, we’re not going to be interested, for example, in giving dogs more toys, more activities to spend their energy on, because ultimately the problem is not boredom once again, but really a fear of solitude. So what we’re going to be looking at is solving the problem of fear of solitude.

The first question we might ask ourselves is where does separation anxiety come from? Studies are not conclusive on this subject. In fact, separation anxiety is a very complex problem, the very nature of which depends on genetic and congenital factors, as well as epigenetic factors, development and the experiences of the individual. Personality can also play a major role. But in any case, what we need to understand is that you could have two individuals experiencing exactly the same thing and yet not perceiving it at all in the same way, in the same way that two children might be presented with the same spider and certainly not have the same reaction or the same emotion when faced with the experience of this encounter. You could have a child who is completely paralysed, stunned or even traumatised by this encounter and a child who is extremely curious about the same spider, in the same conditions and in the same context.

It’s exactly the same for our dogs! In fact, some dogs will be exposed to loneliness at some point in their lives and yet they won’t develop any problems as a result. Others may be more sensitive. Perhaps they had early experiences that we don’t know about, or quite simply their perception and sensitivity at this level were different. Perhaps there are other things going on at the same time. For example, there is a huge correlation between sensitivity to noise and separation anxiety. So it’s not hard to imagine that all this will come into play. Why will our dog develop separation anxiety rather than another?

In any case, there’s one thing you can be absolutely sure of, and that’s that there are a lot of factors involved and no, you’re not to blame. And it wasn’t you spoiling your dog too much that created the separation anxiety, because you took a week’s holiday for his arrival, to allow him to be completely soothed, because he sleeps in the same room as you, because you give him a cuddle when you leave: all this has absolutely nothing to do with separation anxiety.

Just because your dog sleeps with you and just because you give him a cuddle to say goodbye doesn’t mean he’ll develop a phobia of loneliness. These are two completely different things. There’s no immediate link. Why does an individual develop a phobia? Studies aren’t definitive on this subject, but one thing is certain: we know that it depends on a huge number of factors, including genetic, congenital and epigenetic factors, over which we don’t necessarily have control because we can’t know exactly what an individual’s genetics are, And even if we have a perfectly traceable lineage and we have a dog that comes from a breeding farm, despite that, we can have individual genetic disparities that mean we’ll have an individual who’s more sensitive. Why him? That’s the way it is! You have to deal with it. In any case, he didn’t choose it either. He has to live with it. Despite all this, even though there may be additional risk factors that cause a dog to be more sensitive to it over the course of its life, there are things you can do to try to protect your dog, to try to get away from it or to try to prevent it.

And the very first thing you put in place, as in any therapy, from the moment you want to treat a phobia, is to protect your animal. That’s really the first thing to do. If your pet is panicking about being alone, the first thing to do is not expose it to solitude until it’s ready.

As long as a working protocol has not been put in place, as long as it has not been desensitised in the right way. But in any case, the first thing to do is really to protect your pet so that it can be appeased and above all not make the problem worse. What happens with phobias is that the more you are exposed to a situation that seems uncontrollable, the more you are exposed to the object of your fears and the more likely you are to be afraid of it. It’s not because we’re more exposed in the wrong way – that’s what we call being immersed in the situation without being able to escape it – that it will get better on its own… On the contrary! What generally happens is that the more you’re exposed to something that scares you beyond your capacity to bear it, the more you’re going to be afraid of it in the future. And so we have this phenomenon where we have the feeling that it’s getting worse despite everything we try to put in place.

To give you a human example, if I’m extremely afraid of spiders, I’m completely phobic. I can’t see one without having reactions, behavioural symptoms, behavioural reactions that are completely automatic, meaning that I can’t control them. So, for example, if someone throws a spider at my head or arm or whatever, what’s going to happen? I’ll have immediate physiological reactions, maybe my pupils will dilate, I’ll start breathing extremely hard, maybe I’ll scream, maybe I’ll jump on myself screaming. In short, I’ll behave in ways that are totally out of proportion to the situation, but which I don’t think are. And my body reacts automatically to this situation. I’m no longer in control of my body and even if, at times like these, someone says to me ‘don’t worry Marion, that spider is completely harmless’, even if I try to reason with myself and say “it’s OK, it’s just a little spider anyway, I won’t be able to calm myself down because it was so sudden that I didn’t have time to get used to it, I didn’t have time to change my perception of the situation. At that point, my body will respond automatically.

And it’s clear that the resulting behaviour is totally symptomatic of the emotion I felt at that moment. And it’s exactly the same for our dogs. The behaviour they display is automatic, if we’re talking about separation anxiety, because it’s easy to imagine a dog destroying lots of things because he’s bored. Destruction in itself is not enough to know whether or not a dog is in a state of separation anxiety. That’s what we do in our assessment. You can’t control yourself any more and when you try to work, for example, if I go to see a therapist, the first thing he’ll say to me before even working actively with my animal or with me, in this case, is to protect me. “Marion, don’t go to any more haunted places, haunted houses, amusement parks, don’t go to old buildings where you know there are potentially lots of spiders. If you have to go to the attic, then get someone else from your family to go. Those are basically the recommendations I’m going to have to try and protect myself. And it’s not just about protecting myself, it’s also about reducing the total amount of stress I’m going to feel and trying to calm myself down and above all: making room for the protocol so that it can take effect. Because if I try to set up a protocol to get used to, to desensitise myself, because that’s the term, to the object of my fears, so in this case it would be the spider, but then I’m systematically re-exposed in too intense a way to the thing that scares me the most, what’s likely to happen is that I won’t make any progress at all. Because on the one hand I’ll continue to stress, so I won’t have any confidence. I know that potentially, in any corner of the house, spiders can suddenly appear, so I’m going to be on my guard. Our potential behaviour at that moment is hyper-vigilance. I’m going to be on edge all the time. As soon as there’s a little noise, I’m going to be on edge, I’m going to jump, I’m going to anticipate the potential problem that’s going to happen even though nothing has happened. So it really creates a kind of latent stress. On the other hand, I’m going to experience ups and downs in my progress, in other words, one minute I’m going to become desensitised, the next I’m going to start to regain confidence because I’m going to be exposed to the object of my fears, but in a very gentle, controlled way. So I’m just starting to gain confidence. Then, bang! I’m exposed to too much spider and I lose all the confidence I’ve gained and I have to start the protocol all over again. So in fact, protecting yourself is the first step and it’s totally part of the protocol, it can’t be dissociated.

Coming back to our dogs suffering from separation anxiety, our aim is to protect them emotionally to help them relieve the stress and allow the protocol to take effect. So when I say protect here, it means – if it really is separation anxiety – that our aim is going to be to suspend the absences that are intolerable for this dog. So, for example, if you have a small puppy, and as soon as you walk through the front door it’s extremely complicated for him, then it might be worth having him looked after by someone in your family, by the neighbours, by a pet-sitter who would come in a little before you leave and who would allow your dog to be accompanied so that he doesn’t have to suffer any absences and avoid making the problem worse while waiting to potentially start a protocol. And even for you, because you run the risk of ending up with extremely serious material damage, and then you get fed up, at some point, because you simply can’t stand all this behaviour, which is absolutely unmanageable.

I can assure you that sometimes, if you add it all up, it can be more worthwhile to hire a petsitter than to have to pay for all the damage your dog can do. It’s worth it. From a purely material point of view for us. And then, of course, you can’t put a price on protecting your dog emotionally allows him to calm down and regain a state of relative well-being. So we’re not going to concentrate on managing the symptoms. Is your dog barking? Putting an anti-bark collar on him is the worst thing you can do, because you’re still not interested in why he’s barking. If he’s barking because he’s scared, if he’s barking because he’s really in a state of intense panic, maybe the barking will stop. And then maybe it will turn into something else.

Because the stress will always be there and so the behaviour is likely to evolve because it will try to express itself, it will try to come out at some point, one way or another. So really, what you want to do first and foremost is to protect your dog as much as possible. What I also recommend is that you buy a small camera simply to see exactly what’s going on. Because in fact, separation anxiety can only be assessed in our absence. So it’s not at all the classic educational work you might see with any dog trainer, where you do exercises and then go home and the dog has learnt a few things that you can apply. In this case, not at all, because in fact the problem arises when we’re away. And that’s where all the work is going to take place when we start a desensitisation protocol.

It’s not at all the same way of doing things as we’re used to. That’s why there are very few professionals today who are in a position to deal with this problem, because it’s often misunderstood. And the protocols are often not adapted. And above all, even if we have a protocol that’s correct, the aim is always to adapt it to the dog to make sure that for this dog, we’re really on the right emotional threshold. So how do we find out? We need this little camera to see, to read our dog’s signals, to know how to interpret them and also to know when to stop. And since we can’t ask him how he’s feeling, this means that the only reliable, objective and accurate measure is to read his body language. But once again, if you have any doubts – because a precise reading isn’t that simple and will often require the intervention of a specialist professional – don’t hesitate to contact me so that we can make an appointment to assess the situation and make sure we’re working on the right tolerance threshold and whether or not it’s really separation anxiety.

I describe separation anxiety in a little more detail in the little guide, in the e-book I’m talking about: I describe around twenty solutions for suspending absences. So if you don’t have any ideas, if you’re running out of things to do, if you don’t have any family around, if you don’t necessarily have a petsitter or the resources to get one, I recommend that you take a look at this ebook, because there are some ideas for solutions. It certainly doesn’t contain all the ideas, because after all, everyone does what they can in their own circumstances, but in any case, there are a huge number of resources that could be useful to you in getting out of your situation.

Once again, there are a huge number of things that can have an impact on possible separation anxiety. The problem with stress is that it doesn’t just live in a bubble. You don’t have a dog who’s stressed because of separation anxiety and then, the rest of the time, once you’re there, everything’s fine. Often there will be signs of this latent stress because we’re all working, so there’s always a moment when we’re potentially going to be absent. So if our dog is exposed to solitude for 2 or 3 hours a day, that means that every day he’ll be exposed to his worst phobia. Imagine you have motion sickness or you’re very, very scared of spiders, or you’re afraid of heights, for example, and every day you’re faced with one of these situations that puts you in a catastrophic state. What’s going to happen in the long term?

The problem is that you could start to have these symptoms, which will come out even in other situations, because the dog is on edge. So that’s going to create chronic stress, with all that that can entail. Because chronic stress can have a whole host of consequences for an individual’s quality of life and health, but also for other situations which, at first sight, have nothing to do with it. You could very well have a dog who is less and less keen to play with other dogs or, on the contrary, who is more and more excited by other dogs, even compulsive, who tolerates the excitement around him less and less because he can’t take it any more, he needs a breather. There could be a whole host of other symptoms alongside this, including health symptoms that start to appear, such as digestive symptoms, a dog that starts having diarrhoea, but we don’t understand why, we carry out tests, but we can’t find out what’s causing it. Everything is intertwined. And when we do a check-up, that’s what we do: we really try to do as holistic a check-up as possible, taking into account not just the symptoms during the absence, but also the dog’s daily environment and everything that may be going on alongside it, so that we can look after it in the best possible way, making sure we don’t forget anything that could be important in helping the dog to recover completely.

Now, if there’s one last thing I can say to you, it’s that you really should not feel guilty about the situation. Because the problem is that we are often the double victims of this situation, or even the triple victims. First of all, we make ourselves feel guilty, we blame ourselves because we’ve taken so long to understand, because we see our dog in that situation. And then we too can get excited, tired, or not respond in the right way, and that’s normal because we’re human too. We too have to deal with our emotions. But don’t blame yourself because once or twice you’ve had a bad reaction, because you couldn’t take it any more, because you were at your wits’ end.

Now that you’re starting to see solutions emerging in front of you, you’ll be able to put things in place where before you were totally powerless to do anything about the situation. Which also leads to anger and resignation. You’ll be able to put strategies in place that will be more effective, and you’ll be able to get help with this problem. What’s more, we’re often made to feel guilty by our friends because we try to listen to their advice, we try to put it into practice, and we see that it doesn’t work. If it doesn’t work, it’s because you didn’t apply it properly.

Why isn’t it working? Why doesn’t everything you do work when you’re trying to do exactly what you’re told? You’re going to be singled out and your friends or social network advisers don’t know your dog, or its needs, or the context of your life, or you. So the advice they give won’t necessarily be appropriate for you or your situation. Don’t feel guilty. You have the right to say no, you have the right to speak up for your dog. You have the right to want to protect your dog and yourself. And you have the right to say no if you think something is simply not right. And if you’re in trouble, it’s not your fault, even if you’re singled out. His anxiety is not your fault. You’re already doing all you can to try and limit it, so while social pressure may be strong, your dog’s difficulties, which may be seen as a failure and your fault, won’t be.

Because you can’t be responsible for how an outsider perceives a situation. You can’t be responsible for the fact that he feels so uncomfortable when he’s alone. So yes, you have the right to stress, you have the right to fully experience your emotions. You have the right to be angry, you have the right to be depressed, you even have the right to have your back against the wall, especially when the neighbours are threatening you to stop the screaming. So I’m not going to make you feel guilty again. If our dogs have the right to express their emotions, so do we. It works both ways. But the key to getting out of the situation for good is for you too to be equipped to deal with it. So, rather than making you feel guilty, I’d rather give you the tools you need to understand what’s going on and to start putting in place the first strategies to take a breather, to regain a little serenity at home. What we’re going to do now is start a desensitisation protocol.

The aim is to expose the dog to absence and solitude for longer and longer periods, following an extremely precise protocol adapted to that particular dog, in that particular context, with that particular trigger, and so on. And this can only be done when you know your dog exactly, his tolerance threshold, his triggers, his environment, it can’t be done any other way. So, once again, if you’re given advice left and right without any prior assessment, it’s bound to be wrong. You run the risk of making mistakes. You run the risk of getting your dog into trouble and, ultimately, of losing time in his recovery.

I hope this episode on “What is separation anxiety? will have given you the first weapons to perhaps look at the situation in a different way than simply enduring it, being desperate, simply being without tools, without weapons in the face of everything that’s happening. I hope it’s helped you to see the situation a little more clearly.

And of course, if you haven’t already done so, I recommend that you download the separation anxiety guide, which is completely free of charge and which you can find in the description to try and see things as clearly as possible and help you as much as possible with this problem.

If you have any questions or comments about today’s episode, don’t hesitate to comment. In fact, in the comments section, you’re more than welcome to suggest an upcoming topic that’s close to your heart. You can also join my Instagram for more information and free resources under the handle @animalethérapie or on Facebook. Do you have a behavioural concern with your pet or would you like ethical and professional support? You can contact me directly at contact@animalethérapie.com and I’ll see you soon for a new episode.