I've said before that I really admire Suzanne Hetts, and the reason for it is that she does not perpetuate myths about dog behaviour - if there isn't good evidence for something, she's the best behaviourist I know at communicating that fact. So was interested to see this in her most recent newsletter. I've long suspected that ignoring dogs with SRD before leaving wasn't going to have a really good impact on their anxiety levels, and wasn't particularly kind...

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It has long been assumed by some experts that separation anxiety is the result of a hyper-attachment of the dog to the person. In support of this hypothesis is the observation that many of these dogs follow their owners around and are reluctant to let them out of their sight...

Recent data call this hypothesis into question. Researchers at the University of Georgia compared dogs with separation anxiety and those without in a standardized attachment test when at home but separated from their owners*. The attachment test looked at the behavior of the dog when the owner comes and goes from an unfamiliar room and when strangers come and go from the room.

The study found no differences between dogs with separation anxiety and those without the problem, either in the attachment test or in their behavior after the owners were gone from home. The separation anxiety dogs showed no more attachment than did the normal dogs. They didn't spend any more time near their owners in the strange room, and didn't show distress behaviors when the owners left the room. When observed home alone they showed no more time near the door the owner left from than dogs without separation anxiety.

...It's important to know whether over-attachment causes separation anxiety because this can influence the way the problem is treated.

If separation anxiety is due to over-attachment, some experts have recommended that owners ignore their dogs for long periods of time and never respond to the dog's requests for attention or interaction. Our experience with clients that follow this advice is that it just makes the anxious dog even more anxious. This would make sense if the problem isn't due to over-attachment but instead has some other cause. In addition, removing a dog's means of communicating with his owners and to ask for what he wants decreases his control over his environment and can lead to more anxiety and stress.

How we conceptualize a behavior problem and what we think causes it can greatly influence how we try to resolve it. This study points out how important it is to remember that, in the absence of data, what we think is the cause of a problem is merely a working hypothesis that is always subject to change.

So what does cause it? If it is not an attachment to the owner maybe it relates to the home environment. As they conducted the tests away from the home. Maybe it is to do with the dog is relating the owner with the home environment and when they realise that the owner is out of the equation they start to stress. Kooliemum what is your thinking on it?

Not sure - I'd still say that the owner being away is an important trigger for the behaviour (as that's when it occurs) but that maybe that it's not related to how they actually relate to the dog when with it(actually that has long been my suspicion - that SRD is a feature of the individual dog and not so much of the relationship).

The philosophy student in me says 'this is not an argument against it' *but* my alarm bells go off about lots of ideas in training where there is this desire to make the owner responsible for what goes wrong in their dog's behaviour. They're an easy target, and they usually believe what trainers tell them, even if it is only an opinion, without any real evidence. Trainers historically have been a pretty self-righteous group.

It does make sense that it is the dog with the problem and not the owner. Otherwise my two girls would suffer from it too if I was the problem owner. So the equation is obviously not with me but with the dog. I have always suspected that with Zorro it was to do with his personality and not so much with me, I tried to do several things to adjust his behaviour by adjusting mine but this did not work to any great success. Maybe it is similar with humans when they suffer from anxiety and have a trigger, this may be the same with dogs. Some the trigger is the owner being away with others it is with storms or whipper snippers. Or am I on the completely work track?

That's pretty much what I believe. The relationship between ppl and their dogs is created by both parties, so the characteristics of the dog are just as important as those of the owner in determining how well it works (although I think that we are the more intelligent and adaptable species, and so should be the ones who adapt to them, rather than expecting that they will adapt to us).

My suspicion is that a dog significantly anxious about one thing might be more likely to be anxious about other things, but I don't have any evidence for that. My observation of sound anxieties is that there is a physical pain caused by the sound, and I'm not sure that can be learned/acquired - I really think it's anatomical/physically inherent in the dog. But again, just my opinion.

With the sound anxiety do you find that certain breeds are more prone to it. There are certain breeds that seem to produce over anxious dogs and in a sense jittery. So I think that this is bred somewhere into them and maybe a part of their genes or DNA. For example in humans with ADHD and dyslexia they are starting to prove that it does in fact run in some families. The same with epilepsy it has been researched that families that suffer from migraines down the generations usually produce a progeny or two that have epilepsy. Other behavioural problems are also inherited anxiety being one of them in different forms. So it would make sense with dogs as well. Zorro had Border Collie in him and I know in some strains there is a degree of anxiety in their behaviour.

Phew. On one of my faviourite topics/tangents here.

For my two cents I'd say each dog is different and perhaps the way the owner's react to their dog's behaviour has some effect. My previous dog Bluey would recognise that I was leaving by patterns of behaviour I exhibited prior to leaving ie changing of clothes or shoes, picking up of handbag. I think there is a possibility for the owner to make matters worse for a dog that suffers anxiety by for want of a better word indulging the dog and it's anxieties, so perhaps owners can unwittingly make matters worse.

Like humans I think some dogs are wired differently to other whether it is breed related or not I don't know. So some dogs will be more relaxed about comings and goings and others seem to suffer from various anxieties. Maybe this sort of behaviour is wired in early in life depending on socialisation etc perhaps dogs stimulated as discussed with regard to early neurological stimulation (can't remember the acronym!) would fare better.

Perhaps with some breeds with the emphasis on looks rather than the original working features of the breed temperament characteristics have been overlooked creating some less desirable traits in their personas.

One of my favourites too.

Yes, definately higher rates of sound phobias in certain breeds - the Sheltie is the prime eg. Australian lines of Shelties produce a much higher proportion of dogs that are extremely sound-sensitive and sensitive generally than I think could be explained by anything apart from it being a physical characteristic of the dog - not sure you could say they were generally anxious though, that hasn't been my observation. (The US lines Shelties I've been seeing lately are a lot less like that, though.) The whole collie family imo are inclined to be sound-sensitive.

I read something in the past about there being a trade-off between sound-sensitivity and trainability - they worked with Labs and found that dogs that were most sound-sensitive were most trainable (bit of a prob in a gundog lol). I presume they were using punishment-based methods - in which case that makes sense to me - a generally more sensitive dog will care more about punishment and so will be more motivated to avoid doing things that cause it to be punished - appear more trainable. That might explain high levels of sound sensitivity in the breeds that have histories involving a lot of close work with ppl. With reward based methods, I'm not sure the same would hold up.

With BC my view is that their 'eye' is a low-level obsessive compulsive behaviour, and they do show a higher than average rate of visual obsessions such as shadow chasing. I'm not sure exactly what the link between anxiety and OCD is, but it seems to me that a dog with an obsession is likely to be an anxious dog, because it has great urgency to do the behaviour. I also suspect that an anxiety about their bubble of personal space, and a desire move objects out of that space is a base motivation for herding behaviour, and so it seems reasonable to me that herding dogs are more likely to be anxious about unpredicability in the environment etc.

My older red ACD is a real problem child and suffers majorly from separation anxiety.

In 1997 when she was about 18 months old we when travelling around Australia taking her with us. Because we stayed in caravan parks etc we would always take her with us as she was prone to biting to protect her property. She soon realised that everywhere I went she came too, this included fruit picking etc. When I returned home after my travels she would not stay in the yard but would track me where ever I went and if she could not find me then she would go to someone's house (and she has a name tag with my phone number) and the people would ring me and I would come and get her(all big smiles that she found me). This became a regular thing. I have tied her up, she slips her collar. I have put a harness on her, she wiggles out. I have locked her in the house, she jumps out the window. I have tied her up in the house, she jumped out the window thankfully pulling off her collar. We built her a six foot fence with a rock wall around the base, she climbed the fence. I got security screens on the windows, she tore up the curtians, blinds, any surface that she could jump up on she knocked everything down. The list just goes on ... I cannot leave the dog at home. The two times that I have left her at the boarding kennels she escaped and I had to come back to find her..

After all this I have given in and I have had a cage built into the tray of my twincab ute and everywhere I go she goes too. She comes to work and I park in the shade under the building. Even though she is old now she is still destructive when I leave her behind with my OH. PS she does like staying with my mum and dad.

She is 12 now so I guess it is probably too late to change her now... when this first started happening I contacted Dr Cam the dog phsycologist and he prescribed feremones and such, but this didn't seem to help.

Found the abstract...

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http://download.journals.elsevierhealth.co...8780600013X.pdf
In looking for the article above (which is not free, unfortunately) found this one that is - not specifically about SRD - but about what makes a 'good' trainer.
I've found a pretty signif mistake in it, though - in the section on punishment - pretty sure that 'Any animal that was already aggressive will become worse when punished, because now there is little *certainty* that the person punishing them is a threat.' is meant to be 'little doubt'.

The last article was an interesting one, especially of the photo of the german shepherd with an anxious shot and one where he is relaxed. You can see it, I still cannot believe that some dog owners out there cannot read the dogs body language or any dog language.

Reminds me of an incident where two ridgebacks got out in my street. I approached them with my head down and body relaxed as soon as they saw this they immediately relaxed. Then let them come up to me and sniff me. I then rubbed their chest and slowly put my hand to their collars and led them home. Well when I got there the next door neighbours pulled up and switched off their car but did not get out until those dogs were behind the fence. They came over and asked how I did it, did what I said. Well apparantly those dogs were not the friendliest at all. I thought the were okay, the were relaxed their tails were doing that slow relaxed wag and they had boofy grins on their faces.

Went the next day to the people to inform them that their dogs were out yesterday, two totally different dogs when they were around their owners.

I have babysat a few problem dogs and after being with me they improve but as soon as they go back to their owners all the bad behaviour reverts back.

JackieH I do sympathise with you, Zorro wrecked a perfectly good screened window to get out. And when he had to be kennelled I took him to my vet, as she knew what to do when he stopped eating. I think some dogs just have a real strong attachment to their owners.

i think some of these problems start as a pup being left alone, some pups just can't handle it make a lot of noise the owner comes back and cuddles them to make it better or punishes them which ever way the pup won and got attention this problem then builds as the pup grows. but this is in some case's not all, but i think if a study was done on these problem dogs owners then the problem would be half solved the other half would be the dogs themselves that have unrelated issue's

This is very interesting to read. Josie has extreme separation anxiety, but I mainly thought it was because she was blind. Now that I have read this I feel a bit better that she is not the only one.

As you all know Josie has been pretty much blind her whole life. When she was younger she wasn't that bad, but then she begone to get separation anxiety when my husband and I went to work, as JackieH said with her dog, Josie would get out any way she could, dig out, break down screen doors etc and go off to the neighbors or somewhere in the street or couple of street away ( doing this all while blind and managing to stay off of the road) then they would ring me and I would have to come and pick her up. It became so bad my Mum and Dad would babysit her for the day as they lived a couple of streets away. she was very happy with this....

She is normally ok with Cuda ( My German Shepard) these days and is ok if we go out in the car but not is I go anywhere on foot or on my mountain bike.

I have to lock her in the house or she will follow me, as I have not worked in about 1 year Josie does everything with me, so I sometimes think it is my fault she is like this( I know it is different because she is blind)

When I go out on my bike she cries until I get home and I can not stand this, so I wasn't going out on my bike much....Lately she seems to be ok if I lock Cuda in the house with her, they just have a sleep in the lounge room until I get back. But if she is left in the yard even with Cuda she will dig out.

I am very lucky we have a tight knit community and everyone in the street loves Josie, she does get out occasionally and goes down the road to a old couples house and they spoil her rotten. They let her in their house and let her lie in the air conditioning because they say she looks hot....hehe I just laugh, I don't mind they love her. And with Mum and Dad moving away at least I know she has somewhere to stay that she loves when we go on holidays because I could never put Josie into a kennel, she would not survive...I would never put Cuda in one for the matter anyway.

By the way, Josie follows me everywhere during the day, everytime I turn around she is there, it is frustrating sometimes when I am trying to clean the house, but I can never stay mad at her for very long, If I go to the shops she comes with me, If I go to the neighbors she comes with me...


Helenxx

The thing is that a lot of these owners know that their dog is anxious, but they don't know what they can do about it - actually there really isn't anything that they can do about it by themselves. It would be like if I had severe depression, my family, however kind and well-intented, couldn't treat me.



That dog has been treated by Kersti Seksel, and if you need a behaviourist, then you're very lucky to be able to work with her (she's in Sydney, but her services are available Australia-wide - you send her videos and consult by phone). She really is, in my experience, the best.





Writing about Kersti Seksel reminded me of something that Dr Gaille Perry, who works with her, says - that sound phobias don't respond very well to treatment. (I have seen footage of an Airedale treated by their clinic (SABS) that was euthanased due to sound phobias.)

Sound phobias is a concern to me. Ceejay gets anxious when the whipper snipper starts up, but she has improved of late. I don't molly coddle her when it is on, we go inside and I read or do my usual thing. Then we did the next step, left the whipper snipper out in the middle of the yard turned off. She did wide sweeps of it, and came closer and closer then sniffed and ran, Izzy strode in amongst it all and I used the command "sniff" to Izzy, Izzy hoovered her way all over it and so Ceejay followed suit. She still gets nervous when it is on but now she does not hide and tremble.

It is sad that the dog was that bad that they had to euthanise it. Do you think certain pitches of the sound affects their brain in anyway? Mind you that does not explain about dogs getting anxious before a storm where the thunder is kilometres away. I guess the pitch theory might be feasible as some dogs howl to a certain pitch (or just plain lousy violin playing). With storms it might be atmospherical conditions that also affect them. Was commenting to my OH about how dogs seem to have an internal clock, as my two are always waiting when I come home at 5ish all year round.

I wonder whether there is something different about their auditory nerve or whether the wiring in their brain is different - I think the later especially would be compatible with the effect ens seems to have in reducing incidence/severity of sound phobias (that the early stimulation could cause the wiring to form differently).

I suspect there should be some research on sound phobias - when my exams are over (next week) I might have a bit of a look to see if I can find any.

The Airedale was stressed by almost any sound coming from outside the house - she paced and scanned almost continuously. It was very sad, and if they couldn't resolve it, I'm comfortable with euthanasia having been the right decision.

i had a dog with sound phobias she was fine inside the house near us but when she went outside to do what doggies do best lol pee and poo she would sit in the middle of the yard and bark one bark at a time about 5 to 10 seconds apart and that was were she would stay and bark all day now the door was open so she could come back inside at anytime but shades wouldn't come back past the center of the yard we had to go out and bring her back in so the neighbors would not complain. now level with the center of our yard was the start of the food warehouse across the road they had a grid that ran across their drive way which clanked loudly every time a car or truck went over it. it took us awhile to work out what was causing her strange behavior but when i did i found her a new home with a lovely lady that lived in a quite place and shades never sat in the middle of her yard and barked but when she came back to us for visits she would go back in that behavior even after 12mths of not seeing us.

Are there records of reverse separation anxiety, where the owner becomes overly stressed being parted from their dog.
My Titch follows we everywhere throughout the house, even into the toilet and bathroom, it has been this way ever since her birth, she and I are rarely apart.

On the occasions when I must leave her, she tries to beat me out the door, but I am firm and she obeys me.

The problem is that when I have left she if fine, she settles down, no issues.
But I am concerned about her the entire time I am away, and I become more anxious as I near home.

When I am back with her she is all happy and thrilled, I am just relieved she is alright.

As I don't leave the property often, I put it down to habit, I am so used to being around my dogs especially Titch that I am stressed when away from them.

I wonder if this is how it happens for dogs.

I am not bothered by the situation, but am aware of it and as I prefer their company to most humans it not an issue that requires fixing.

I am glad I am not the only one, when I go away for more than a day by the second day I am missing my dogs. I think just having them around and beside me all the time when I am at home I feel as though something is missing from me. TJ I am the same I really do prefer my dogs to some people, and when I am home with my OH and my dogs I would rather stay home than go out, as I am my happiest being with them. Plus my dogs reactions if I am away is really something, they wait each afternoon around 5ish at the gate and expect me home. Though I don't get too anxious about being away from them.

Royalla it is interesting that your dog found a certain sound upsetting and glad that you found the connection. I suppose when a car or truck goes over a grid there is a high pitch ring from the steel being hit by the vehicle tyres.

In looking at the SABS site just now, I see that they are doing a research project on using a homeopathic remedy for dogs that are afraid of thunderstorms. Dogs don't have to be in Sydney, only in Australia. This is the email address... sabs@sabs.com.au

I did send Jacquie Ley who is doing the trial (for the makers of the product, which I think is already available through vets) Wal's details, but he wasn't suitable because of his health problems. So they still seem to be looking for dogs. Would be good if the product works.
Jacquie Ley seems like a really interesting person - everything that it says on the SABS site that she's working on is something I'd like to work on lol.
From the SABS site...

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has just completed a PhD at Monash University developing a model and questionnaire for describing canine personality. Other research interests include cat ownership, the decisions breeders make when choosing to breed their dogs and the role of canine personality in successful human-animal relationships.