For a minor separation anxiety problem, the following techniques may be helpful by themselves. For more severe problems, these techniques should be used along with the desensitization process described in the next section. Keep arrivals and departures low-key. For example, when you arrive home, ignore your dog for the first few minutes, then calmly pet him. Leave your dog with an article of clothing that smells like you, an old tee shirt that you ve slept in recently, for example.
Dogs usually learn to associate certain cues with short absences by their owners.
For example, when you take out the garbage, your dog knows you come right back and doesn't become anxious. Therefore, it s helpful to associate a safety cue with your practice departures and short-duration absences. Use your safety cue during practice sessions, but don t present your dog with the safety cue when you leave for a period of time longer than he can tolerate or the value of the safety cue will be lost. Leaving a radio on to provide company for your dog isn t particularly useful by itself, but a playing radio may work if you ve used it consistently as a safety cue in your practice sessions. If your dog engages in destructive chewing as part of his separation distress, offering him a chewing item as a safety cue is a good idea.