Lonely dog blues: Train your dog to relax when you ' re not home

Once upon a time, the family dog might have been able to spend his days helping dad with the farm chores and meeting the kids at the school bus stop. Today's dog is likely to be face 9 hours or more of alone time every day -- not the best situation for one of nature's most social animals. Still, given enough love and exercise when his folks are around, most dogs adjust.



But some pets not only can't handle a whole day without mom and dad, they freak out when you just make a quick run to pick up the dry cleaning. In this week's Pet Connection syndicated feature, you'll find advice on coping with canine separation anxiety from Gina and Dr. Marty:

Dogs who stress out when left alone may cause significant damage to themselves or their surroundings. Others may fill their time alone by frantically barking themselves to exhaustion. Faced with nonstop destruction or complaints from neighbors, some dog owners feel no choice but to take their pet to a shelter, where a dog with a serious behavior problem is a poor prospect for re-homing.



But it doesn't have to come to that.



If your dog has a hard time staying alone, you'll need patience, a plan, and possibly the help of a veterinary behaviorist, who can help you with that plan and prescribe medication to ease your dog's transition to good behavior.

Next, a reader asks the question: can you really train a cat to walk on a leash? You bet, says Gina:

Indoor cats can indeed be trained to enjoy an outdoor outing on leash, and for this treat, you need a harness to go with that leash you were looking at. Choose a harness designed for cats, not for dogs, in a figure-eight design, or a comfortable cat harness vest. (Cat collars are made to allow escape, and that's not good!)



Don't expect your cat to walk on leash like a dog, however. Walking a cat consists of encouraging your pet to explore, with you following, offering plenty of praise and maybe a treat or two.



Never leave your cat tethered and unattended. This leaves him vulnerable to attack or to a terrifying time of hanging suspended from his harness should he try to get over a fence.

Plus: a dazzling array of trivia from Dr. Marty and Mikkel, including a report of a new diagnostic test for proventricular dilatation disease (PDD), a wasting disease that affects many psittacine species, such as macaws, cockatiels, budgerigars and other parrots; coping with pet fur on your clothing; tips on training your dog to stop begging from Dr. Rolan and Susan Tripp; and my review of Dr. Nancy Kay's new guide to helping you become a better medical advocate for your dog, "Speaking for Spot."



It's all here!

Comments

[Janeen]

The separation thing is not an issue for us since my dogs go to work with me - but... Zip the Kelpie is wound tighter than a yo-yo in a centrifuge. Even with massive quantities of mental and physical exercise her default reaction to anything 'icky' (and she has a looonnggg list of 'ickies') is to avoid it or go stiff as a cast iron doorstop.



It really isn't terribly difficult to trim the toenails on a doorstop. Or to take its temperature rectally - but I suspect that it isn't very pleasant for the doorstop. So, I've taught the little nutcase a "Relax" on command so that we can do these things to her with less stress.



Have done a similar thing with some client dogs. Its a great thing to do with a puppy that doesn't have an off switch.