TOP 5 TIPS for Iggy Alone Time
How to get your iggy to love being alone
We discussed briefly the challenges of returning to work after self-isolation in Episode 3 of our podcast The Iggy Parents called “Troubles in Quarantine” but let’s dive deeper into the topic of Separation Anxiety and how we can help our pups adjust to being on their own again.
This blog post is for anyone who struggles with leaving their dog alone. First of all, how do you know your pup is struggling with this? We’ve experienced some of these things but have also chatted with many iggy friends about their experiences leaving their pups on their own.
Disclaimer: we are not vets or trained professionals, so if you think your pup is suffering from severe separation anxiety, always contact the vet.
TALK TO YOUR VET if any of these issues are severe or detrimental in any way to your pup’s quality of life. There’s always a chance that something else is wrong and these are signs of another cause OR they have severe separation anxiety that needs attention.
Before diving in, let’s briefly discuss what we mean by “alone time”. For your dog, alone time might be synonymous with crate or pen time, whether you are in the next room or are out of the house for hours. Alone time doesn’t have to mean they are the only person/dog in the house. It could even be that your dog is not alone in the house, but is just left without your attention. All of these times might create challenges for your pup is they’re still adjusting to being on their own.
Sometimes the challenge comes from experiencing change. If your dog comes from another home or breeder, they might be used to having more dogs around, for example, sleeping beside their litter mates or mother. The challenge could also be coming from a change in routine or schedule, like when returning to work after months of being at home (we’re looking at you, 2020 quarantine time). Regardless of what counts as alone time for your dog, it’s good to be aware of the signs.
Let’s dive in! Here are possible signs that your pup might be struggling with being on their own:
VOCAL CUES: whining, barking or howling both when you are leaving and while you are away, potentially becoming hoarse from over use of their voice
DESTRUCTION: either chewing their surroundings destructively or destroying anything around the house could be a sign of boredom during the alone time
APPETITE: if your dog should be eating while you’re away, pay attention if your dog is not eating when you’re gone but will eat when you return. They could be experiencing a loss of hunger due to your absence.
INJURY: trying to escape a crate by clawing or biting and causing self-harm in the process
ACCIDENTS: if they’re potty-trained, you might find little accidents when that hasn’t been a problem recently.
Whether it’s severe or mild, WHY should you be concerned?
If you live in a condo/apartment, having a pup that howls all day while you’re gone might not make you the most popular neighbor. So simply put, if your pup is struggling with being alone, there’s the chance you might get noise complaints.
Even if you work from home, if your pup struggles with independence and needs you with them at all times it can be difficult to work successfully. If they can’t handle being alone, they could be very traumatized if they ever have to stay overnight at the vet or doggy day care.
Another concern could be the damage to your home, furniture or items. This usually happens if your pup is not crated and they are able to roam free, but being crated doesn’t necessarily solve the problem either. If you choose to crate your pup (which we do highly recommend), there’s also the risk that your dog might hurt themselves physically. It could be anything from over-barking and hurting their voice or causing physical self-harm.
Adelaide is overall pretty good with being independent on her own and when we leave her but signs that we notice she is not ok with being alone include:
Crying when we take out the garbage. The funny thing is that when we leave to just take out the garbage, we often leave her roaming free since the trip from the garbage chute and back is less than a minute. Adelaide loves her pen/crate, so when we leave her for long periods of time, she’s always happy to stay in there. Sometimes we wonder if leaving her to roam free makes her unsure. This is usually the only time she will cry when we leave.
Crying if she’s in the pen and we’re home but ignoring her. If we are home and she’s in the pen, she cries and jumps up (seemingly to jump over or just grab our attention). This doesn’t happen all the time, but usually happens if she’s in the mood to play. If she’s had proper exercise, she’s usually much calmer.
Destroying her paper pee pads. Adelaide used to dig up her paper pee pads after hours of being left alone. We tried to distract her and keep her mind busy with slow-feeding toys like a Kong or putting peanut butter on a LickiMat with treats dispersed over it. Our biggest solution for the problem was changing the paper pee pads to reusable pee pads. Adelaide tried digging into them a bit but she was unable to destroy them. Now she usually leaves the pee pads alone. If she’s really frustrated (usually when it’s raining or something else has postponed her daily exercise), she sometimes tries to pull her pee pad and rip the edges.
Eating her own poop. She used to eat her poop or play with it if we left her with it for hours while away. Of course it’s not fun to clean up the mess, but it also meant that sometimes little dried-up pieces of poop would end up in her bed/blankets which required extra cleaning.
Pulling on the pen/crate. Adelaide can pull her pen in on herself, tugging at the walls of it. So sometimes if we’ve left her for a while, she pulls on the walls and can change the whole shape of her pen. Over time this could be really bad for her because her pen could close in too small for her and she hasn’t learned how to push the walls back out.
Licking/Biting the lock. She licks and bites the lock that is keeping the pen closed. We know this because she does it when we’re home and it’s a quiet way she tells us that she wants to be out of the pen.
Destroying her bed. Adelaide has always been in the pen/crate when we leave her for hours. We try our best to tire her out but if we’ve ever left a bed in there with her, she destroys it by de-stuffing it. The one exception is our really wide bed we use now as a little base for her blankets. Fingers crossed she hasn’t destroyed it yet. In our experience with other dogs, sometimes being left alone means that a normally potty-trained dog will have accidents.
WHAT CAN YOU DO
1. Practice leaving - no big deal, I’ll be back!
Dogs can pick up on your cues when you are leaving, for example, the sounds of keys jingling, the turning of the door knob, the sight of you putting on your shoes or coat. Every time we do these things, the dog quickly learns that means you are leaving and your dog never knows for how long.
So instead, practice a “false exit” by using all of these cues but then just don’t leave. Grab your keys, your shoes, your coat and then put them all back and “return” home. Slowly, your dog will learn that not every time you grab your keys, does it mean that you are leaving for good. We want to break this association.
Over time, you can practice leaving and keep the moment you are gone very short. For example: Stand on the other side of the door and wait just 30 seconds. Use this as a training opportunity to build up your pup’s stamina. Like crate training, don’t return if your pup is in the middle of crying. See if there is a lull in their crying or barking so that when you return, it is not confusing them. We don’t want them to think that your return is a result of their cries.
Keep practicing incrementally until your pup doesn’t cry when you leave or while you are gone.
If starting with the leaving rituals is too big a step, start just with STAY. Build up stamina and continue “stay” but head out of sight. When you reappear, release them from their stay. This teaches them that you WILL return. They don’t have to come and search for you.
2. Practice arriving - no big deal!
Again, just like crate training, you don’t want to make a big deal out of your return.
(I’m guilty of this in the mornings when Adelaide is SO EXCITED to see me if I’m the last one out of bed)
If they are in a crate, don’t release them or greet them if they are crying or barking. Wait until they have calmed a bit. You could ask for a “sit” or wait for eye contact. If they associate this behaviour with being released from their crate, they will most likely continue to do it.
3. Physical Exercise and Mental stimulation
When your pup destroys something, it might be a sign that they are bored - they are not mentally stimulated enough or physically exercised. By giving them opportunities to physically exert themselves before you leave and mentally challenge themselves, they will tire more easily and perhaps find more peace in alone time. Pay attention to the age and breed of your pup and ask yourself if they’re really getting the cardio exercise as well as mental stimulation that they need. Physical exercise can be anything from a walk, run or game of tug. Mental stimulation would be a puzzle game - it doesn’t have to be anything expensive or fancy. There are a lot of puzzles you can buy - wooden or plastic toys designed specifically to challenge your pup. Snuffle mats, treat dispensing toys, or puzzle games can often be recreated with household items. Example: hiding treats in an egg carton and closing up the holes with tennis balls. The pup has to remove the tennis ball to get the treat. Snuffle mat? Hiding treats in a shag carpet could also work.
4. Food-related toys (stuffed, puzzle, slow-feeding)
You can practice using stuffed kongs or treat-dispensing toys to feed all meals to make them more exciting than a bowl. This way your pup will learn how they can be fun and will want to enjoy it while you’re away. A slow feeding toy like a licki-mat is great to distract your pup as well when you are leaving (again, don’t make it a big deal).
We used these in the beginning with Adelaide and made our exit as casual as we could. One problem...she would eat through the treat too fast. Freezing the treats is a way to help slow them down too. We used peanut butter as well.
5. Use old clothes/blankets
If your pup is coming home for the first time from a breeder or home with other dogs, it might be that your pup misses being around its litter mates, house mates or mom. If you can manage to get an old blanket or article of clothing that might smell like your pup’s littermates, housemates or mom, place the blanket or article of clothing in the crate with them.
If your pup adjusted well with living alone (away from their dog family) but is struggling with being away from you, try an article of clothing from you or blanket that smells like you. This can help with dog boarding/babysitting as well.
In addition to these Top 5 Tips, a tactic we’ve been recommended by friends is listening to podcasts - I swear this isn’t just a plug for The Iggy Parents - our friend Bambi has been struggling with alone time and her mom plays podcasts while she’s away. It reminds me how we used to leave the TV on for my family dog, Cloey. If we were to leave something on for Adelaide, I imagine that videos of Italian greyhounds on YouTube would be the perfect choice!
We hope that our experience with Adelaide can help other Iggy Parents out there that might be going through the same struggles. If our tips help, please let us know! We love to keep in touch and follow along with the journeys of our fellow Iggy Parents. It’s still a work in progress for us and we know that returning to work is going to present new challenges. We will use these tips ourselves to stay accountable and help Adelaide adjust to being on her own again.