Teaching a German Shorthair Pointer to Stay to Help Stop its Separation Anxiety

For this Los Angeles dog training session, we help 2 year-old German Shorthair Pointer Cooper learn to stay to help him get over his separation anxiety.

I suspected that Cooper would need more exercise before I even knocked on the door. Any professional German Shorthair Pointer dog trainer will tell you that this is one high energy breed. They need a lot of exercise and failing to provide the dog with it often results in dogs who jump up, bark, chew, dig and more.

After suggesting some creative ways to exercise the dog, I went over the importance of rules and structure. Unless a dog sees you acting like a leader, listening to you is somewhat optional. Consistently enforcing rules can go a long ways towards achieving this goal.

Stopping separation anxiety in dogs is all about helping the dog feel calm and comfortable when its alone. Many dogs with separation anxiety have no practice at being alone. Often referred to as velcro or helicopter dogs, their habit of following you everywhere means they have no practice at being alone.

As a dog behaviorist, Ive found that teaching a dog to stay is a great way to help a dog get over separation anxiety. I handed the guardian my camera so I could go over how I use positive dog training to teach a dog to stay.

Once the guardian has achieved the 5 minute stay, they can start adding in distance. This is the stage that will allow the dog to practice being alone. By progressively increasing the duration of time the dog is apart from his guardian, we can help the dog practice not freaking out when left alone in the easiest capacity possible.

While it was challenging to go over the steps to teaching a dog to stay while Cooper was so distracted, its actually a good lesson. The guardian will need to properly exercise the dog first and avoid competing with distractions like the reflecting light that happened in the above free dog training video.

Once the dog can stay while the guardian is not in sight, they can start progressively increasing the time. The more experience Cooper has at being calm when left alone, the less the separation anxiety should effect him. This is the secret to stopping separation anxiety in dogs.

To help Cooper’s family remember all the other dog behavior tips we went over in this in home L.A. dog training session, we filmed a roadmap to success video.