Tips to Stop Separation Anxiety for a Recently Adopted Rescue Dog

By: Sam Kanouse

Published Date: January 8, 2018

Bobo 1 - Tips to Stop Separation Anxiety for a Recently Adopted Rescue Dog

In this Omaha dog behavior session we helped a recently adopted rescue dog, Bobo a five-year-old Border Collie stop separation anxiety.

After I arrived I sat down with Bobo’s guardian to learn about their main dog behavior concerns. Since Bobo was recently adopted the guardians were still learning about him, however it was clear right away that he was dealing with some separation anxiety. It seemed likely that in his past home he didn’t spend much time alone, which contributed to him developing separation anxiety.

To help him overcome this issue I talked to the guardian about working on disrupting their typical routine of getting ready to walk out the the door so Bobo doesn’t get so worked up any time that they leave. You can see how I did this by watching the video below.

As you can see in the video above, we gradually added small steps of the guardian’s typical routine to leaving the house over time. This exercise will take time, consistency and patience to help Bobo relax and trust that he doesn’t have to get anxious to have them come back home.

By the end of the session Bobo was calmly waiting for his guardians to return when they got to the bottom of their basement stairs towards their garage door. This was an exciting improvement for Bobo! To keep up with this great progress the guardians will want to practice this as much as they can and open and close the garage door randomly throughout the day when they are home so that sound doesn’t always signal that they are about to leave. We wrapped up this dog behavior session with Bobo’s Roadmap to Success video, which you can watch below.

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This post was written by: Sam Kanouse