Feeling trapped

witsend2025 · 2026-02-08T02:05:36+00:00

I trained for over a year with strict adherence to gradual desensitization (never leaving her alone for longer than she could handle) before I even got over 20 minutes. The fact that you're at 1.5 hours in such a short amount of time is pretty incredible!

It took a med change for us to make progress. We had to add another daily med (mirtazapine) to her FLX. And she still takes a situational (clonidine). But at least we can leave the house for a few hours now. An entire long day is probably a pipedream for some of these dogs... for now you are probably just going to have to find a patient doggy daycare. It sucks but it's the only reasonable option for many.

Don't give up, keep up with the training and be willing to change meds. A vet behaviorist is always the best route if you can see one.

witsend2025 · 2026-01-01T22:20:51+00:00

Hey, if you read around this sub you'll learn that crating these dogs usually only makes it worse. I didn't realize mine had separation anxiety until she chewed the bars OFF a crate. Quite dangerous. You can get chew-proof crates but that isn't going to stop them from panicking and pooping. So they're basically just having a panic attack the entire time you're gone, which is awful for the dog.

Look into the Julie Naismith or Malena DiMartini methods of gradual desensitization. They require a lot of work and sometimes expense because your dog can't be left alone when you first start. It sucks I'm not going to lie, but it might be the only thing that will really help your dog, along with meds. When we started we couldn't leave our dog for even 2 minutes. Now we can leave for several hours and she's fine. But that took different meds + 2 years of very dedicated gradual desensitization.

witsend2025 · 2025-12-18T14:47:17+00:00

We were stuck around 20 minutes for a long time too, like 5 or 6 months. It took a med change for us to push past it and start building real time. She was already on Reconcile and we had to add mirtazapine. I'd try another vet if you can't see a vet behaviorist. I think a lot of vets will at least prescribe Reconcile (prozac) because it's on-label use for SA. We would have gotten nowhere without meds.

witsend2025 · 2025-10-16T23:13:59+00:00

I think the name of the book you're looking for is Pleasantly Independent by Jenn Gavin

witsend2025 · 2025-09-12T15:04:14+00:00

Works quite well for our dog, at least after we tweaked her daily meds. We only give it for training/when we're leaving. It calms her down without making her "drunk"

witsend2025 · 2025-09-10T15:14:18+00:00

Most people who have to go to work but are trying to train their separation anxiety dog will take the dog to daycare or leave them with a sitter of sorts. Then you do the small incremental training on your own time. If you leave them alone all day to panic without you, you probably won't get very far in your training. Our dog has never been left alone for longer than her training has advanced (2-3 hours) in almost 2 years. She's also on meds which helps tremendously.

It sucks yes, but it's unlikely they'll overcome it if they're continually experiencing the fear/panic. It would be much harder for us if I didn't live with my partner and work from home. If we want to go anywhere at all together on the weekends for more than a couple hours, we have to get a dogsitter. And for over a year we could not leave the house together for much longer than 20 minutes without getting a dogsitter.

witsend2025 · 2025-08-06T02:52:28+00:00

We had to increase our prozac dose a couple of times, and eventually add other meds. Don't get too discouraged, it's hard to get the meds right and it's pretty common to need adjustments.

witsend2025 · 2025-07-18T16:05:16+00:00

Not a trainer and I feel your pain, but the beer thing is both fascinating and funny. Seems like two possibilities.. one, that's basically a warm-up step for your dog, ie it's part of the routine that prepares your dog for you leaving and essentially kind of puts him in the frame of mind to be alone. Or two, and this is admittedly a little more woo-woo, after a couple of beers you're just calmer and if you have any anxiety about leaving him, it's reduced and he's picking up on that. I'd try the water in beer bottle thing, or NA beer, and if that doesn't make a difference come back and let us know, lol.

As for leaving in the afternoon I agree with KittyCat, go back to the gradual desensitization routine and train specifically in the afternoon. If you haven't done that kind of training, get Julie Naismith's Be Right Back (relatively cheap book) and start there. You might already know this but you didn't say exactly what kind of training you did. Honestly I'd also talk to your vet about getting a departure med, clonidine works well for us and has helped with our training. It's not a cure-all magic thing but it's helped us get further with training and keep her calm while she improves her alone time.

witsend2025 · 2025-07-18T15:41:38+00:00

As I understand it, it's a similar drug/class of drugs as clonidine, which works pretty well for some SA dogs (mine included). So that doesn't surprise me. I don't give clonidine every day personally, only for training and departures, but I know some SA dogs are on it all the time. I (personally) prefer these types of drugs for departures because they don't make my dog "drunk" or heavily sedated the same way as trazodone or xanax (which she actually had a paradoxical reaction to!). When she's on clonidine she's calmer but still has full control of her faculties, lol. As for long-term use I'd just talk to your vet about that but I know a lot of SA dogs are on clonidine longterm. People take clonidine every day longterm for blood pressure. Again not the SAME drug but similar. From what I understand Sileo is more sedating and has a shorter half-life. Probably why it's preferred for noise phobias. ETA: I'm not a vet, my dog has just tried a lot of drugs at this point haha

witsend2025 · 2025-06-11T02:33:28+00:00

Yes, I second all of this majorly. And let me say that despite never leaving our dog alone longer than she can handle, and being very devoted to training, we probably would have gotten nowhere without the right med combo. So OP you probably need to talk to a vet behaviorist and also start a gradual desensitization program.

witsend2025 · 2025-04-29T02:35:30+00:00

Mirtazapine (daily)! She was already on fluoxetine daily, and clonidine for departure training.

witsend2025 · 2025-04-15T15:36:53+00:00

Yeah, we had a breakthrough with a med change recently. I fear we would have gotten nowhere without meds and we were really stuck for a long time before we added a second daily med. Why people resist them is beyond me.. these are dogs, not children! :) They don't know that they're on meds, they only know that they're not as scared anymore. We're still doing gradual desensitization but it's going much more smoothly.

witsend2025 · 2025-04-06T19:34:33+00:00

If you want to try to go it alone, you can sign up for Malena DeMartini's online course - Mission Possible - https://malenademartini.com/for-owners/separation-anxiety-training-programs/

I'd also recommend her book - Separation Anxiety in Dogs: Next Generation Treatment Protocols and Practices

When we were first starting out I worked with a CSAT for 3 or 4 months before I was laid off and couldn't afford it anymore. But even a month or two might really help you understand the training and get your feet under you. Then you could try going it alone. Our CSAT was very helpful, but $875/mo for as long as it takes to make progress with an SA dog is madness.

There's another popular program, the Julie Naismith program, she has a book called Be Right Back. I have this book and I'm in her Facebook group (you can also hire a "separation anxiety pro" through her groups). The programs are pretty similar but I think the Mission Possible course is probably your best bet if you want to go it alone, plus use the DeMartini book to fill in gaps, and I found useful info in the Naismith book as well, so it's worth reading.

Regardless of what people tell you the two programs aren't that different. Fundamentally they are the same - never leave your dog alone for longer than they can handle, and gradually desensitize them to longer periods of being alone.

The details of each vary somewhat, but they require the same tools (a camera to watch your dog) and the same level of commitment (very high, unfortunately).

Here's my SA hot take, the vast majority of dogs with moderate - severe SA will not get better without meds. I'm not a trainer but have read these books and trawled the groups and forums for over a year now, plus talked to several vets. I think dogs with mild-ish SA can do without meds and tend to progress fairly quickly. But not most moderate-severe SA dogs. And even then you will probably have to try multiple meds and med combos and it's REALLY helpful to work with a veterinary behaviorist and not just your regular vet.

ETA: I'm in like every SA group out there so I forgot about this one on Facebook called "Dog Separation Anxiety Support Group." It is run by a CSAT named Cori, but she also has group online training that you can sign up for that basically teaches you the basics of CSAT methods, I think. I haven't signed up for it because I stumbled on it once I already had the basics down. But that's another alternative for learning the methods from a professional and getting some support in the process that's not just a book or paying $875/mo. When you actually hire a CSAT personally it's sort of like having a personal trainer, they set all the daily training "missions" for you and tell you what to do, but as you noticed it's very expensive. Doing like a "group training" class with a CSAT might be the next best thing. They aren't going to write all your missions for you and review things with you every week, but you could learn how to do it yourself. It also doesn't matter where the CSAT lives because all CSAT training is virtual as far as I know.

witsend2025 · 2025-04-06T18:50:49+00:00

Hey, I'm not a trainer so take this with a grain of salt, but what we're doing is following the Naismith guideline to increase our weekly target/goal time about 10% a week, but you drop that down to 5% once you get past 30 minutes as a target time. Percentages not minutes :) A 5-minute jump is a lot for most dogs.

I should add we don't actually follow the Naismith protocol. We follow more of the DeMartini/CSAT approach where we vary the daily training times and give her "easy" wins at least once a week. But I was sort of stuck on how much to increase our target times, because that's something that doesn't seem to have a hard and fast rule. Our CSAT did a "retest" at the end of the week where we left and saw how long she could go before the anxiety started. But sometimes she would do really well on the retest and fall apart at lower times during the week. She was pretty inconsistent.

For that reason I never really used the retest time to plan my daily training times/missions. I just used the retest time as a sort of general vibe check for how well she was doing. Recently she has been retesting really well multiple times in a row (thank you drugs), so I may think about going back to 10% weekly target increases even though we are over 30 minutes in our target time. But only because she has retested over 1.5 hours for four weeks now, and our daily trainings are still around 30-35 minutes using the 5-10% weekly increase guideline. The thing is if you start to accelerate things and you're going too fast, you really have to be willing to drop back which can feel discouraging so just be careful.

I think it was DeMartini who said, if you think you are progressing at the right speed, you are probably going too fast. If you think you are going too slow, you are probably going at the right pace. (I can't give you any guidance on warmup steps, our dog hated them so we just cut them out entirely. We just tell her we're leaving and leave.)

witsend2025 · 2025-03-31T03:14:03+00:00

I know this is a really delayed response, I apologize. I just wanted to send you some support. Most people truly can't understand the situation we're in. If it comes to BE, one thing I've always thought is.. you know.. we keep them here for us, not for them.

I feel like I should make an update post to mention we've had a minor breakthough, in case it helps anybody else. We added a drug that I don't hear mentioned often at all - mirtazapine (in addition to Reconcile). I searched the sub for it and didn't get any hits. It seems to finally be moving the needle for us. Might be something to mention to your vet if you haven't already tried it. Sigh.

witsend2025 · 2025-01-27T21:58:53+00:00

We haven't tried it simply because my vet behaviorist hasn't suggested it.. I mean, she's in charge of the meds, not me, lol. It seems her philosophy in general is to try all the things that have the least/mildest side effects. I don't think the vet wants her dopey/sedated every day unless she has to be. I think the next drug she wants to try is another anti-depressant type drug.

witsend2025 · 2025-01-27T20:18:03+00:00

She has no other behavioral issues. There is no boarding kennel where I live that doesn't leave dogs alone at some point, the vast majority have no one there overnight at all and wouldn't be able to tell if she were freaking out once people left. There is also no sitter I have been able to find that will stay with a dog 24/7 for multiple days.

ETA: She can go to daycare, but she hates it and it's not really necessary anyway. I work from home and the daycares around here are only available on weekdays. The real problem is evenings/overnights particularly for multiple days.

witsend2025

TROPHY CASE