u/scootsmch

We adopted our rescue dog three weeks ago. She’s a 2 year old terrier/pug/mystery lady. For the most part she’s been settling in well, and is really sweet with my husband and me. She listens well, is mellow during the day when we’re working (we both work from home), sleeps through the night, etc. She is a bit reactive on the leash, which we’ve been working on, and she’s also a little nervous with new people visiting our home. We’ve been doing slow introductions which has been making a difference - she calms down a lot quicker now when new people visit. 

Since the beginning, we’ve been having issues with separation anxiety. We’ve been trying to do short departures to build up her tolerance, but often we can only leave for 15-30 seconds before she is barking and pacing. Since this is a new experience for us, we tried setting up a camera and leaving her for a while to see how she did and if she would settle down eventually. We left her with a snuffle mat and left the house for about 50 minutes. She remained interested in the snuffle mat for 5-10 minutes after we left, but then started pacing through the house. She went back to the snuffle mat a couple of times, but she mostly paced, barked a little, and when we could see she was howling we went home. Once we got home, we also found she’d peed on our carpet, which she hasn’t done since the first day we brought her home.

Her foster described her as crate trained but mentioned she would cry in her crate before they left for work. I have a feeling she continued to cry while they were gone (one of multiple things the rescue/foster downplayed) and our vet tech agreed she really doesn’t seem to like a crate and free roaming may be a better approach. Our preference is to not crate train, if at all possible. For now, we’ve set up baby gates so she will be confined to our kitchen when we need to leave her. We’re doing our best to find people to watch her when we have to be gone.

I’ve read Be Right Back and have been trying to implement the training, but it’s honestly so overwhelming. I also listened to Susan Garrett’s podcast describing the Frida protocol, but we haven’t tried that yet. I’ve started separating her from us for periods (hours) during the day so she’s not always with one of us and gets more practice being on her own. She settles on the couch during those times, for the most part (sometimes she’ll chill in the hallway outside my office for a bit or wander the house a little). 

I know about the 3-3-3 rule, and she’s honestly been through a lot in the past few months. She was rescued in Mexico and was pregnant at the time, brought to the States and gave birth in foster care, was fostered for a couple of months, then was spayed after being with us for only a week. She’s just now recovered from her spay, poor girl. I’m wondering if anyone has seen success with early signs of separation anxiety after the dog has had longer to settle in? I don’t want to regret adopting her but I’m already feeling trapped in my house after only 3 weeks and dreading the months ahead. Any tips for other things we should try to help her be more successful on her own? 

Thanks in advance! This community has already been so helpful.