My partner (31M) and I (28F) have a 20-month-old Boston Terrier. As first-time dog owners we tried very hard to do everything “right” from the beginning, including training him to be comfortable being home alone.
Around 6 months old he started showing signs of separation anxiety and one day completely panicked when we tried to leave. We then began working with an amazing trainer and basically started our training all from scratch: We had also unknowingly been overstimulating him a lot with obedience training and activities, which she helped us dial way back and practice calmness instead.
After about a year of training calmness and careful routines, things are now much better. For the past ~3 months he’s been able to stay home alone for a full workday (6–7 hours), 5 days a week without any issues. He mostly just sleeps all day (we monitor him still) and we’re just so happy that it worked out.
However, here’s our new struggle:
Though he is cool with us leaving him to be by himself all day, he gets extremely stressed when we have other people watch him – e.g. if we have to go to a wedding or something where we will be coming home late and can’t bring him along.
Because his separation anxiety was so difficult, we never really practiced leaving him with others. We’re also both pretty introverted and don’t have people over very often, so he’s mostly used to just being around the two of us.
When family or friends watch him, this is usually what happens:
– We arrive at their place (or they come to stay at our place), and he seems happy and is often very excited to see them
– We sit down to talk a little while, and he usually settles
– They take him on a walk without us (which he doesn’t mind)
– We leave while they’re out so he doesn’t see us go
We’re told that he seems fine when they get back, but is often a bit hyped. The issue is that he almost never calms down again and just cannot seem to relax at all. He often won’t sleep and only lay down for very short periods of time.
Then, of course, he ends up being overly tired. We usually tell people to sit down and do something else so he can calm down on his own (since attention often makes it harder for him when he is all worked up), but either way it often escalates into more and more frustration → seeking attention → jumping → biting furniture → barking → sometimes even grabbing/biting their clothes or even arms/hands.
Personally I interpret this behavior as frustration from not being able to settle + confusion about the new setting and lack of routine = a self-regulation issue rather than seperation anxiety.
(I’d love to hear what any of you think, though!)
An example: Yesterday I dropped him off at my dad’s in the afternoon and picked him up today, and he told me that he didn’t really settle at all from around 3 pm and until 10 pm, when they all went to bed, and he finally gave in, after my dad had ended up physically holding him down onto his bed – which I don’t know how I feel about to be honest.
Our dog has been prone to doing something similar when we have had guests over in the past, where he just wouldn’t leave them alone. But now that we’ve trained calmness so much, he usually ends up settling on his own when everyone has sat down and we ignore him – and if not, we have a few method that usually help him (limiting him by wearing a leash indoors, sending him to his bed, giving him a stuffed Kong etc).
We’ve tried explaining these methods to friends/family watching him, and even writing down instructions for them to follow if he did end up acting like that. But since we’re not there, we obviously don’t know if it is because they don’t do it completely right, or if it is because it only works when we do it. I also feel that people will take my advice very lightly and saying stuff like “he’s just a teenager” or “we’ll manage, don’t worry”. They seem to be thinking that I’m overprotective, when what I’m really worried about is that them taking it so lightly ends up making it worse, making it a bad experience for both them and my pup.
So I’m wondering:
Has anyone else had a dog that
– is totally fine being home alone,
– but becomes overstimulated or stressed when being watched by other people?
What did you do to train it specifically?
I’m also curious if our lifestyle might play a role. We’re both pretty introverted and rarely have guests over.
Has anyone noticed their dog struggling more with visitors because they simply weren’t exposed to people that often?
And how did you manage without changing your lifestyle into something you don’t want?
I’m a bit worried that the solution might be something like “just start having friends over a few times a week and gradually practice leaving for short periods” etc., because the thought of having guests over that often is honestly overwhelming for me. I’m autistic and already struggle to keep up with everything in a normal week, so it will probably be difficult for me to sustain such ways of training long term. I really want to do whatever is necessary to help him feel safe and not anxious, but I’m worried that a solution like that might end up overstimulating me instead.
TL;DR:
We’re introverts and our teenage dog used to have separation anxiety but can now stay home alone all day without issues – he just can’t settle when he is being looked after by our friends/family. What should we do to train it?