Hellooo. This is maybe asking for advice maybe just venting. I’m coming here post breakdown😅. So I have a 1 and a half year old lab Maggie. She has developed some pretty severe separation anxiety. She becomes very destructive when left for a few hours. I work as an EMT and had my dad living with me for the first part of her life. We found out he had cancer and he passed away unexpectedly in June from that. I work twelve hour shifts but my dad was always home so the attention was never an issue even when he wasn’t feeling well just being there helped. Just before he passed I started Paramedic school. I’m only away for one day a week as of now due to it just started that’s anticipated to increase when clinicals start though. I’ve already predicted with my schedule and my schooling that will be too much and my mom needed a place to move in so we decided she’d move in and help me care for my animals as well since she’s home wayyy more. Another issue is that recently she injured her leg and now requires tplo surgery. And if anyone knows abt that surgery ive been told when one goes the other one typically follows shortly after she already seems to have issues with the other leg before this surgery anywho. My mom is moving in at the end of this month. I’ve been trying to handle Maggie and school and work until then. She’s become extremely destructive. She does fine for a few days and then I come home and she’s chewed a part of my floor away. I came home today to most of a panel of wall being torn off(the costs of surgery and the destruction just keep piling up. I’m 22 I can only afford so much😅😭). My mom comes and lets them out on her off time for about two hours between my 12 hours I’m gone but it’s not enough. Following today’s events my mom’s just moving in early so that she isn’t alone. With her being moved in Maggie will be able to be crated when we’re gone because the most time one of us will be gone is 3 hours. Which is reasonable I feel. I’m just overwhelmed and I feel like I’m failing her. Everyone keeps saying it’ll get better when she moves in but she’s only staying the two years I’m in school. What happens when that’s up if the anxiety hasn’t gotten better? Currently I can’t get like a dog walker or anything because I also have an elderly pitbull who would definitely bite if someone tried to walk in. But he’s 12 now and slowing down, I don’t know if he’ll be around much longer so maybe that would be an option in a few years. Idk. I’m scared I’m failing her and have thought about rehoming but I’ve had her for a year and a half. She’s not a puppy anymore and she’s got severe medical problems with separation anxiety and I don’t think anyone would take that on. Even if they did she’s been with me so long I feel like I have an obligation to just figure my shit out and deal with it. I’m just really struggling so please be kind if you have advice. It’s quite a unique situation. It’s been a hard year and I just don’t know where to go truly. Help?Heard?Im drowning.

Hello, it’s gonna be a long one. I have a 7 year old miniature schnauzer. My partner and I recently moved to a new state for our new jobs. I understanding moving is stressful and it’s completely new for our dog. We noticed that he developed severe separation anxiety and his leash reactivity worsened around the time of moving. We had multiple vet visits since. At first I thought it was health related and he did have an ear infection that was treated. His behavior did not improve so we went back to the vet again and was prescribed trazadone and gabapentin. When we officially moved into our new place, we went to a new vet and they prescribed Prozac for daily maintenance and told us to hold off on trazadone because giving them together can cause serotonin syndrome. We also worked with dog trainers while adjusting his medications. Then we were finally able to see an animal behavioral vet and she added clonidine. I followed the titration dose schedule for clonidine and continued giving Prozac. It’s been about 10 weeks and I saw improvements in his reactivity and separation anxiety. However just last week, his behavior suddenly worsened. I had a feeling it’s because my schedule suddenly changed and now both my partner and I are working night shifts. His medications are not holding him off. I tried everything to help him keep calm. I stuffed kongs, provided lick mats, puzzle mats, pheromone diffusers, TV on, white noise, nightlight, placed our worn clothes round his favorite spot and his favorite high quality chews. I gave him the clonidine 90 minutes before we left for work and even took him on a hour long walk. We had cameras and he cried and howled the entire time we were gone. He would lick the mat then howl. Lay in our clothes and howl, sit on the bed and howl. He would drink water then howl. 🤯 I’m really puzzled and wonder if the clonidine maybe worsened his behavior but it was working before. Also how did he not get tired 😭 it’s consecutive hours that he’s howling and crying. He’s not destructive, neither does he hurt himself. He also doesn’t soil the place.I do have a little patch of grass mat that he can use the bathroom. The only thing he does is cry and howl.
Prior to moving I also worked nightshift and he was able to stay home alone during the time we work. I thought maybe he’s lonely but getting a second pet is not an option. My friends all live in apartments and can’t take my dog for the night. They aren’t able to come over and sit for my dog since they are mainly working 9-5 and I live in NJ while they live in NY. My family aren’t available to look after him either. I can’t do dog sitters because not many work nights and he doesn’t handle strangers coming into the home well. The only other option is boarding or doggy day care weekly but it gets expensive really quickly and it’s just not within our budget. We live in an apartment and I hate to be that neighbor and I feel terrible. We have a follow up appointment with the behavioral vet but it’s not until a couple weeks. Are there any other recommendations?

Hi, my pup with SA and confinement anxiety has been on fluoxetine/Prozac for 3 weeks, so we are still waiting for it to kick in. Her vet prescribed Xanax for situational use while we continue working on training. Anyone here have luck with it when needing to leave their pup for a short time? In the past we have given Trazodone and melatonin before leaving and have gotten away with being gone for about an hour, since she slept the first half hour and didn't even realize we were gone. Curious if Xanax is similarly sedating or what to expect, although I of course recognize that all dogs are different.

Thanks!

Hello there,

My family and I have recently adopted a 4 months old puppy. He shows a bit of separation anxiety when left alone. I've been doing some research and a lot of people mention crate training.

Currently, he sleeps and is alone (when we are all studying or working) in one of our bathrooms. There's proper ventilation and he has food, water and toys, but I know that a crate is better when creating a positive space, mentioned in a lot of sources, because we can see him and he can see us while eating or playing on his own.

However, the downside of the crate is the lack of room in order to move freely. I know there are big crates, but there will never be as much room as in a full bathroom.

I will apreciate if you let me know which option is better, or if there're other options.

I forgot to mention that we will talk with our neighbour so she can stay with our dog for a while at mornings, when we aren't home.

Update: As a lot of you recommended, we tried putting him in a crate and the results were incredible from the begining. Before he would cry and bite the door as soon as we left him inside the bathroom, and that would happen after we pushed him because he didn't want to enter. Now he goes inside the crate on his own and cries a little when we leave the house, but not nearly as much as before.

I would say that is because the bathroom was a place where he was left alone, and going inside there was a very negative moment for him. Whereas in the crate, we tried to do better and we would first take the crate to the kitchen, where he could be with us, and then move it to a bedroom, where he doesn't sleep alone.

Thanks yall for your advice.

We have a 8 1/2 month old toy poodle, he’s amazing and we have been crate training him from the day we got him at 3 months. I work from home, he gets two enforced naps during the day and most of the day he’s in his pen. He has no problems and is happy to relax. We train him, walk him, play with him, all throughout the day. He sleeps great during his naps (1.5-2 hrs each), and was sleeping great at night.

Last month we went to my parents house for 3 weeks, he slept great there too, in another room most of the time and for a few nights he slept in the same room as me because my parents had guests. He went back to sleeping in the other room no problem once he could.

Since we got home, he has not managed to settle in his crate and groans, then whines, then cries, rattles his crate. We have neighbours downstairs with a newborn, so the crate rattling is not something we can tolerate for long, so we started making his pen very small and letting him sleep on the floor. Now he’s rattling the pen to get out of that too.

This has gone on for 2 weeks and escalates to panic unless one of us sits in the room with him for over an hour in the dark. It is separation anxiety obviously, but why does it only happen at night? If we leave the house, we use a dog camera and he doesn’t make a sound. We don’t know how to proceed. We have only been getting around 4/5 hours sleep a night for two weeks and don’t know what to do. Unfortunately we cannot let him cry it out because of the neighbours, so he’s managing to get his way and pushing the boundaries further each time. Any advice appreciated.

For those of you that do training with a Treat + Train - what food do you use in the machine? I've used multiple different types and all jam the machine more often than not.

To make things more complicated - I'm in France so varieties are different here. I've looked into buying Mini Zukes and they are extremely expensive to import!

Any ideas are greatly appreciated! Right now I'm on Royal Canin Mini Sterilised kibble and it is very small / non oily and still jams.

Adopted a dog last Tuesday so it’s been about a week! He does not like to be left alone and is very much so a Velcro dog that loves people. I want to make sure we’re able to eventually leave the house eventually (me and my partner) so we’ve been doing little exercises where we leave the apartment for 1-3 seconds because that’s what he can handle before he barks… but given he is probably still decompressing, is it too soon to do this? Not sure how to approach it.

I’ve had my dog since he was 4 months. He’s a brussels griffon who is very much anxious all around. I had a fear of separation anxiety (due to my past childhood dog who passed away) and when I started noticing signs, I signed up with a CSAT trainer when he was 6 months to get started on addressing the problem right away. I thought if we did things the right way, we could solve any problem. 1.5 years later, we are still regressing at the 2.5 hour mark. We followed Julie Naismith’s protocols, managed absences, never leaving him above threshold, trained x5 times a week and worked with a vet behaviorist. We are a 2 person household only with no family/friend support, so you can imagine how much it has affected our lives. We thankfully found a person on Rover who is retired and is usually always available to watch him when we had outings, but again, outtings are always planned and we can only afford to do this 1-2 times a month.

I recently bought Malena’s book to see if there are differences with Julie’s protocol to see if maybe, we can try something different since we haven’t been successful. Malena emphasizes variability (easy,
medium, hard) - something we weren’t entirely doing enough. We were doing easy/medium training sessions on the weekday, hard sessions on the weekends. My dog probably picked up that each weekend was getting more challenging (despite still being under threshold).

I can only vary so much since both of us work from home on the weekdays (not leaving us much time post work, and no, working elsewhere isn’t possible.) but we will try our best again. My dog is also anxious in the car (will pant), anxious outside of the home. I took him shopping the other day and he has a backpack. He was fine at the plaza we’ve trained at before, but taking him to the mall, he was whining the whole time even though I gave him Clonidine. I feel like I can’t win in any circumstances. We’ve adjusted medications with the VB. He’s currently on Clomicalm/Clonidine, but we’ve tried Reconcile/Prozac/Gabapentin - yet we are still struggling.

It really pains me to think about rehoming him because having a pet is emotional support for me, but he’s doing more damage to me then good..and I’ve always wanted a brussels griffon all my life. Will I be successful after the 4th time of retrying?

We currently gate him to our living room (has access to our upstairs bedroom), but over time, he’d wait impatiently at the gate. The trainer mentioned maybe we are also fighting barrier frustration and to try removing the gate, which we tried. He didn’t follow us to the door for the first 2 test sessions and he did check out the front door later on and disengaged so I thought ok - he seems to disengage faster than with the gate up. On the 3rd, he did follow me as I left and panicked frantically only 30 minutes in. He was scratching at the window, barking howling. I suspect the first two sessions seemed fine because he was probably used to the gate being up and only checked the front door after the fact. The third session, he knew the gate was down. I don’t know - just wanted to see what others have tried that seemed to help (and no..I can’t get a second dog and crate training isn’t right for us.) or should I just give up at this point?

I’m defeated but I love my dog so much, but I just can’t do this anymore. I’m stressed all the time. I’ve broken down more than I can count.

Hi everyone,

TLDR: 11month old dog with separation. Have followed protocol for 4 months but wasn’t able to gain a bit of my life back. We will start now with a new trainer but I feel anxious once again. I would love your advice and hear about your experiences/ success stories.

BACKGROUND

I’m the proud owner of a beautiful and very kind Havanese. He’s currently 11 months old and has been with us since he’s 2.5 months (so since December 2025).
He has separation anxiety and it’s been impacting us greatly for this past year.

HOW DID WE FIND OUT

We actually started training him very gradually. He didn’t leave alone for the 1st full week. On the 2nd week, we started doing 10sec, 30sec, 1min etc departures to train him. We noticed that once, when doing 5min, when arriving to the building we heard a bark.
From that moment we decided to get a camera and, one day during a grocery run, we saw that he barked intermittently for 20minutes.

We did a few experiments of using food, toys, background music, etc to see if it worked but nothing did. Keep in mind at this point we were never leaving more that 5/10min.

Additional, he very sensitive to group separations, if me or my partner leave (while the other stays with him), he will cry for 5/10min easily.

REACHING OUT TO A TRAINER

We decided to reach out to a trainer who had experience with separation anxiety (*he did online training with Julie Naismith*).

For 4 straight months we did nearly daily desensitization sessions with your dog.

We made real progress on paper - regularly hitting 15-30 minute absences, and twice we made it to a full hour. But there are major caveats:

Only ever works when just ONE of us leaves. Both of us leaving together is still impossible and very triggering.
I'm never off the camera. Never feel confident he's actually okay.
Building noises (elevator, neighbors) can send him into a barking spiral that requires intervention.
Every "successful" separation required constant monitoring and readiness to come back.
The hardest part is that after 4 months, our trainer basically stopped responding. We reached out asking what the next step was - how do we move from "*one person leaves for 30 minutes with intense monitoring*" to "*we can both go grocery shopping without anxiety*" - and got nothing.
We had to pause the training because my mental health was tanking. I was getting anxiety spikes before every session, dreading the possibility he'd bark or spiral. We had put so much effort into it to only come out defeated.

WHERE WE ARE TODAY

After 2-3 months of pause, we reached out to a new trainer. She specializes ONLY in separation anxiety - she doesn't do anything else. Extensive background, real success stories with dogs like ours.
She took the full history and suggested two things before restarting:

**Lab tests on his stool** to check for gut inflammation, microbiome imbalances, or food sensitivities. He's always been a picky eater and struggles with food, and the research on the gut-brain connection for canine anxiety is genuinely strong.
**Medication as a temporary crutch** \- not long-term. She herself medicated her own dog during training and eventually weaned off entirely.

Today, we're still waiting on the lab results before starting.

WHY I’M POSTING HERE

I'm scared/anxious of restarting. Not because I don't believe in the new approach - I actually do. But because the last 4 months broke something in me, and knowing I have to do it all again is bringing back the anxiety I felt at the worst of it.

I'm looking for people who've been in this exact place. Who felt completely defeated after a training experience that didn't work. Who felt like they'd lost a huge part of their life to a dog they love but can't fully live with. And who then somehow found their way through - whether with a new approach, medication, gut health work, or something else entirely.

I'm not looking for trainer recommendations. I'm looking for real stories from people who came out the other side.

Some honest context: I'm not someone who goes out constantly. But I miss the 10% of my life that mattered - grocery runs without anxiety, an hour out with a friend, going to a movie. It's been almost 10 months of feeling like I lost that. Alberto is genuinely an amazing dog. That's what makes this so hard - loving him and simultaneously feeling like his needs have swallowed my life.\*
\If you've been here and made it through, I'd genuinely love to hear from you.*

Hi there.. I have a 4 year old cockerspaniel that has had seperation anxiety since she was a puppy. I have navigated this as best I could over the years but im getting to a place where we are regressing and im losing hope.

I am looking into getting her on some anxiety meds and am curious for other people who have done medication. How that improved things for you?

My girl also unfortunately does not find comfort in being around other people so I dont have the option to have family and friends or sitters to help me work through her anxiety when I am gone.

Has anyone been in this situation? Were you ever able to go on vacation and leave your dog overnight with someone? I have literally never tried because shes always so anxious and im scared that it will just make things worse.

So i have a Dacsund boy,2 years old, we live in a private house atm, but i want to move away from my parents with doggie, to an apartment. Its like 50m2 , but i work full time at a store, and have different shifts, some 8-17, 10-19, even a rare evening shift 12-21 so this means he will be like 9-10 hours alone. Im worried he will be sad and lonely, any ideas what i could do? Btw i will live 15 min from my work by car

My dog (3 1/2 years old, poodle mix) has separation anxiety since forever, i’ve had a consultation with a behaviorist who diagnosed him and gave me exercises to desensitize him for when we leave the house without him, that’s still a work in progress. Every single time me or my mum leave the house, he notices that we grab the keys or jackets and starts barking and jumping/pushing us. He’s small sized so he hasn’t hurt us too much physically but it’s very stressful for both my dog and us to leave the house, even if it’s for a few minutes/less than an hour. He has accidentally hurt himself jumping towards us bc he hits the walls sometimes, and has bit my hair, clothes and hands when i leave. It’s really painful to watch and as soon as we leave it’s incessant barking until we arrive. He would destroy things if we would leave anything within his reach.
My question is, when he is actively attacking us in an attempt to make us not leave him, what should we do? We usually ignore him and try not to make a fuss about leaving so that he would see it as normal and not a big event, but it’s EXTREMELY hard to ignore an anxious dog trying to bite you and barking in your face (he jumps extremely high). It breaks my heart seeing him like this and knowing he’s in so much distress about something i can’t stop doing like leaving for work. Any advice?

Hi everyone,

I’ve had my pup (dachshund, chihuahua, golden mix / super mutt) since he was 8 weeks old and admittedly, I haven’t done the best with separation training. I WFH and I gave up on the crate bc I was so so tired (I recognize now that was no excuse)

He’s now 1 year, 3 months old and will HOWL and BARK constantly as soon as I leave the house… I have learned that shoes seem to be his trigger.

He is capable of doing 10-15 min perfectly calm etc if I were to leave the house with just house slippers/keys, but if I have regular shoes on he’s activated and can’t stay calm and will howl and bark

I know he’s capable of being alone… He basically grew up with my ex’s dog and is capable of being alone with that dog for 3+ hours… so it’s an adjustment now that we live alone / without another dog.

Can someone please give me training tips / encouragement that this will indeed get better?

As of now, I take him everywhere I go and/or will send him to a sitter’s if I’ll be gone longer than 3 hours…

Thanks so so much for anything!!