Helping a Super Friendly Shiba Inu Get Over His Separation Anxiety

By: David Codr

Published Date: November 12, 2019

Casper Shiba - Helping a Super Friendly Shiba Inu Get Over His Separation Anxiety

For this Omaha dog training session we shared some dog psychology tips to help a 1 year-old Shiba Inu named Casper get over his separation anxiety problem.

Dogs with a separation anxiety problem often have accidents in the house, engage in destructive chewing, bark, drool, shut down, etc. Casper manifested his separation anxiety by chewing the frame around the door to his home. When you have a dog engaging in behavior like that, using a kennel is a good idea to keep it safe and your house intact.

Unfortunately, Casper’s guardian had hired a “dog trainer” who did a board and train – something Im not a fan of as I find many board and trains use the old, force and punishment based training philosophy; things we abhor here at Dog Gone Problems.

Im not a fan of board and train because in my experience as a dog behavior expert, the methods they use rarely fix the problem and frequently cause other, far worse issues. One of the things that happened was Casper developed a negative association with the kennel so I shared some positive kennel training tips. It only took a few minutes before he was going into the kennel on his own.

Casper has a great pair of guardians who have arranged for him to spend time at doggy daycare which is probably why his anxiety with the kennel was far less than it could have been. I often recommend using doggy daycare when you are helping a dog get over a case of separation anxiety so the kennel isn’t locked at as a negative.

Stopping separation anxiety in dogs involves desensitizing the dog to the triggers associated with the departure of the humans, build up the dog’s confidence and find ways to help it practice being calm while alone. You can get a bunch of tips to help dogs with separation anxiety by watching the free positive dog training video below.

It was great seeing how quickly Casper learned the lesson. When the guardian mentioned the “dog trainer” he previous hired said Casper’s behavior and failings were due to the dog being untrainable I was peeved. Nothing could be farther from the truth. This is a smart dog who was eager to please. The failings are on the “dog trainer” who only seems to know the old discredited force and punishment based way of training; telling the guardian to spend hundreds of dollars on shock collars, that dog beds screw up a dog’s spine (one of the dumbest things I have ever heard) or that the trainer’s lack of results was the dog’s fault.

I hate seeing a dog suffer from separation anxiety as its a very fixable dog behavior problem. I want the guardian to practice the steps I outlined to put an end to the dog’s separation anxiety and call or text me if he runs into any problems or things stop progressing in the way we want. Anyone can use these tricks to stop separation anxiety in dogs, even if they aren’t a professional Shiba Inu dog trainer.

Since they are so dedicated to Casper, Im betting it won’t take long for his humans to help this awesome Shiba feel comfortable when his is alone at home.

To help the guardians remember everything we covered in this in home Omaha dog training session, we filmed a roadmap to success video that you can check out below.

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This post was written by: David Codr