r/Separation_Anxiety

My dog has just turned 2, and over the past 5 months, he has become reactive toward unneutered males. If he is on-lead, he will bark and lunge. If he is off-lead, he will bark and chase them away. Interestingly, he is absolutely fine with neutered males, though he can be a little overly friendly with females.

He also suffers from separation anxiety, and I am worried that neutering him permanently might lower his confidence and make his anxiety worse.

My vet has suggested trying chemical castration first. I would love to hear from anyone who has tried this:

• Did it help with his reactivity toward intact males?
• Did it make his separation anxiety or general anxiety worse?
• How long did it take for you to notice a change?

We adopted our Boston Terrier, from a rescue when he was about two years old. Ever since we brought him home, vet visits have been a frequent part of our lives. His behavioral issues first surfaced one evening when my partner and I went out for a jog, leaving him alone. When we returned, he was panting heavily with his tongue sticking out, breathing rapidly, and desperately trying to escape—even attempting to climb any fence he encountered. Full panic attack.

Our vet immediately prescribed fluoxetine. This helped for about two months, but then he started to develop severe pacing. He would pace in circles in the kitchen, around the table, and around us for no apparent reason. His appetite also dropped significantly. Knowing something was wrong, we decided to take him to a veterinary behavioral specialist.

The specialist diagnosed him with severe separation anxiety and OCD pacing. They explained that fluoxetine can make some dogs nauseous and simply doesn't work well for every dog, so we switched him to Zoloft. Unfortunately, it was a similar story; it seemed to work for a a couple of months, but even after we increased the dosage, the pacing eventually returned.

Now, we are trying citalopram. During his first week on it, we saw huge improvements. However, now that he is at his planned normal dose, his pacing seems more extreme than ever, and his appetite is completely gone. Throughout all of this, he has also been on gabapentin, which is the one medication we know works well for him without causing any side effects. (He also does not react well to alprazolam—that just seems to make him hyper and hungry.)

It has been almost three years of constant experimentation and it is starting to take a massive mental toll on us. We feel so defeated. Everything we have tried seems to have failed. His anxiety is adding to ours. It feels like we can't get a break from our stress. We aren't sure if anyone else has had similar experiences, but we are seriously considering rehoming him at this point because we are completely exhausted. I love him dearly and we just want what is best for him. My biggest fear is that he is not going to be able to find someone who is will to keep trying to find a solution.

Would like to hear your thoughts. I know there are ‘strict rules’ in the world of SA training but I’ve recently tried telling my dog to lie down and praised him and he’s gone straight to sleep.

Hello!

At what point did those of you who have successfully weaned your dog off their meds start the process? Did you wait until you’d reached your goal and were comfortable things were sorted, or did you wean them off and continue the training?

Also, at what point did you consider the issue ‘fixed’ ie not watching the camera like a hawk for every absence and not having to do active training every day?

We are up to 1.5 hours and he is consistently hitting that every time. I don’t think it will be long until we’re at the 2-3 hour mark which is all I’ve ever wanted to be honest so I’m trying to think ahead for the next steps.

Many thanks

Hi all!

I think my Tommy, 1yo Havanese, has been struggling when alone and I’m trying to figure out how bad it actually is.

As soon as I pick up my keys and bag he rushes off the couch and gets really clingy and will start barking and be absolutely glued to my legs on my way out the door. 

Wasn’t always like this, and I’m worried it’s getting worse. Started 3 mo ago when I got a new job and new hours.

I see such different advice everywhere. Some people say it’s normal because of the new work hours and he'll grow out of it, some say to use tools like Kong or tire them out more, and others say you shouldn’t leave them alone at all.

For people who have been through this, how did you figure out how bad your dog actually might be?

I’m not looking for a diagnosis from Reddit obviously. Just trying to understand what signs made you realize it was more serious, or what helped you stop overthinking.

Appreciate the inputs!

This isn’t a separation specific question, more on the general anxiety side.

Does anyone else have a power chewer? Our guy loves soft toys to chew to self soothe when he’s winding down, however NOTHING lasts. He doesn’t like hard or rubbery toys for these specific times so those don’t suffice and I am so sick of spending a small fortune on toys that literally end up in the bin within 15 mins of him having them.

Does anyone have any recommendations?

The barking, crying, scratching the door… it looks intense, but it doesn’t mean it will stay like this forever.

One thing that actually helps in many cases is practicing very short departures instead of suddenly leaving for hours, and avoiding overly emotional goodbyes.

With small, consistent changes like short alone-time training and keeping departures calm, many dogs slowly start to feel safer being alone.

It doesn’t fix overnight, but it does get better step by step. 🐶✨

We've been doing desensitization training & all other types of trainning trying to address our dog's anxiety / isolation anxiety for almost a year. She is a 2-year-old rescue mix with general anxiety (afraid of the car & vet) and isolation anxiety which at it's worst presents via barking & howling but these days is mostly just panicked movements around the house (we haven't let to her get to the barking stage in a really long time, I'm not even sure she would still do it). When we adopted her we had no idea what we were getting into, but we loved her and we were ready to strap in and put in the time to address this. We found a trainer, started the protocol, did everything right. At one point she was holding for close to 45 min.

Then we pushed too far too many days in a row (we got over excited at her progress) and since then we have watched months of really hard work basically come apart. She's back down to a threshhold of like 4-5 minutes, and the past 2 months of training I haven't seen much improvement upon this despite people's notes that dogs who regress bounce back quickly.

I think what I'm sitting with right now is: maybe we can't cure this. The amount of energy we've put into this - daily trainings, obsessive research, coordinating schedules, finding sitters, testing daycares, canceling & rearranging plans, spending tons of $$$ — has been genuinely and truly exhausting. I was happy to do this when we saw progress each month, feeling like it was all getting us to our end goal, however slow. But I never would have guessed that 1 year later we would be at only 4 minutes...It feels like we have tried everything to help our dog and nothing is working. Our friends think we're a little crazy, and I'm starting to wonder if we are crazy too. And the hardest part is that after all of it, her progress turned out to be so fragile - like any bad day could upsend it. Do I recommit to all this hard work even when months of effort can just be decimated with 1 or 2 bad sessions? I can't control everything.

We are hopeful since we just started working with a vet behaviorist & are going to try a new trainer & a new cocktail of meds for her (she was on prozac for a while which did work for a bit, but now we're putting her on sertraline + a situational med). But I am also skeptical since meds have not been a silver bullet for us in the past. We've discussed rehoming her this devestating to think of - she is the BEST dog besides this, and we truly love her and she loves us. Rehoming would be traumatizing for both of us (more traumatizing than a 40 min absence here and there), and I'm not sure we could find the right set up for her. I feel like we would consider a 2nd dog before this.

I have hope for our next steps but as a backup I'm genuinely curious: has anyone gotten to this point and just... stopped trying so hard to control this? I can keep doing the formal training sessions, and if I'm out for a long stretch I'll absolutely still get a sitter. What I can't keep doing is coordinating one every time I need to run out for 30-60 minutes. For context, she's not destructive, at worst she'd bark and disturb the neighbors, which was our biggest concern when we started all of this. It's funny (not funny) that what once felt like an urgent problem now seems so small given how much we've upended our lives trying to fix it. Have people found a way to just live, accepting that the dog might struggle during short unplanned absences? Is that a real path?

Would really love to hear from anyone who's been at this long-term and found some version of peace with it, whatever that looked like.

For all of those in the trenches I wanted to post a hopeful and positive progress update!

We rescued a 4-5 year old dog from our local shelter in November. We realized very quickly she has had a rough life and had separation anxiety. She would howl, wail, and try to break out of her crate beginning on day 1. We moved away from the crate to a gated area hoping in would help but it did not. She became an escape artist and we had to revert to the crate for her safety.

We initially gave her a few weeks to settle in and decompress and then started working a desensitization protocol from Dr. McConnell’s booklet “I’ll be Home Soon”. GREAT RESOURCE! It really helped and she was beginning to show progress - albeit tiny, tiny amounts- but then we had to leave her for a week at the end of February and it reset all of her progress. She was back to a full blown panic the moment she realized we were leaving.

At this point we booked a vet appointment to discuss options and felt comfortable starting her on an anxiety medication. She is a pretty anxious pup in general and is terrified of the outside and other dogs. We are working with her on that as well. She started Prozac the end of March and we fully committed to the protocol from Dr McConnell’s booklet. No missed days, no giving up. And let me tell you, I almost didn’t make it through week three. It felt like progress was insanely slow and I was completely sick of doing the same drills over and over. Luckily Dr. McConnell’s booklet warned this is exactly what would happen and to stick with it - so we did. And holy cow am I glad. Yesterday our scared girl spent 15 minutes alone without a moment of panic. She was calmly lying on the floor when I returned. I’m so excited to see the progress she will make over the next few weeks. It was like a light switch flipped somewhere in weeks 5-6.

I’m positive the medication is helping as she is suddenly making huge strides in all her training but I just wanted to throw out an encouraging post for those still in the midst. “I’ll be Home Soon” was an incredible resource for us, alongside medication, and I am so incredibly hopeful that she will be able to be calm and happy while alone soon.

Keep fighting for your pups! You can do this!

My puppy is almost 1 year old, and we’ve had her since she was 8 weeks. Her alone-time training has been really up and down, and I’m starting to feel frustrated, helpless, and honestly a little defeated.

When she was a baby, she was very scared of us leaving. But by around 4 to 5 months old, we were able to leave her in her crate for about 2 to 3 hours.

Around 7 months, we started slowly training her to free roam while we were gone, and we eventually built that up to about 2 hours.

Then around 9 months, she regressed back to only being able to handle about 30 minutes. We slowly rebuilt her tolerance again and got back to around 2 hours, always with a lot of exercise beforehand. Even then, some sessions were still wobbly, like she would wake up from a nap and start barking.

We got her spayed around 11 months old, and now she’s about 3 weeks post-op. Since then, she hasn’t been able to handle even 30 minutes of alone time. I first started with her normal alone time routine (free roaming but realized she would bark constantly, jumps up and down from my bed, and keep checking the door), and now we are back to crating her…

The constant regression is really getting to me. It makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong or like I’m failing her. It’s also really hard to have a normal life when we feel like we can’t leave because of the barking. We live in an apartment where noise travels easily, so that adds another layer of stress.

I’m not sure what to do anymore, like do I just let her bark it out? I don’t even know if this is true separation anxiety or just a rough regression period, and I don’t want to sound ungrateful because I know many people have it worse. But I’m really struggling.

Has anyone dealt with repeated regressions like this? Any advice, reassurance, or training tips would be really appreciated.

After long discussion with my parents on my dog’s needs and advocating for her, I got us all on the same page for the majority. They’ll be helpful with me in terms of coordinating around not leaving my dog alone, and also with even contributing to doggy daycare since we just got her 2 months ago (rehomed her). However, with the training and pouring money into that, I know it’ll be on me, and I’ve accepted that that’s okay.

So now that I have help with making sure she isn’t alone, where do I even start with training?

I just feel lost. Can I try and do this alone, or hire a trainer?

My vet denied her meds, and I am considering going to get a second opinion but I want to start training again (I did before but stopped) and see how far I can get progression wise.

She doesn’t like her crate. I see people say crate train first. She isn’t destructive so it’s not a necessity in my opinion, she does better free roaming.

Do I need to pay money for these training packages like Naismith?

I’d just love a starting point and how to buildup from there.

Hi guys,
I have an adult dog, poodle who has been very g attached since day one. Didn’t help that we were remote during his puppyhood. Eventually he did get better at being home alone once we had to go into the office. He never got the the point where he was completely unaffected by being home alone. He’s a howler, doesn’t destruct, roams free since day one. But he was somewhat okay with occasional howl here and there. Then we had a baby and I stayed home for a year and this just made him even more of a mess. New neighbors don’t tolerate his screams. And he starts howling right away. I can’t leave the house unless I have someone to watch him. Day care costs add up so I only can do it once in a while.
Started reconcile 4 weeks ago and started testing chlonodine this week.
So far I tested the combo a few times and he did well, some whining by the door but no howling, expect for one time. I only tested for 20-30 mins. Felt good about it and decided to leave the house for real, left the key to the friend in case he howls. I think he got triggered by the way I was getting ready, packed baby’s bags and so on vs just stepping out when I was testing the meds. And he started howling immediately. Luckily my friend could go get him.
I do work on desensitization as well but with a baby it’s hard to do it all at 100%. I put a lot of hope in the medication and would love to hear success or failure stories

Thank you