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DOG BEHAVIOR

Separation Anxiety - Most dogs will have never been alone until they are brought into your household. Part of successfully raising a puppy is helping them to become self-confident, and independent. To do so they NEED to spend some time alone, to learn that the sky won't fall in! The easiest way to help a dog avoid this disorder is to leave them crated at night in a room of their own.

Be careful not to unintentionally encourage hysteria by rewarding it with lots of attention. Reward CALM behavior, and you will see more calm behavior. The painless way to accomplish the very first separation is, lots of exercise, a big meal, give them a chance to go to the bathroom, and then go watch a movie or go shopping for several hours. Hopefully the puppy will be tired and will be sleeping when you return.


Housebreaking - There are two basic reasons that you can housebreak your dog. The first is instinct not to mess in the den, and the second is surface training, whatever surface the dog most commonly uses to eliminate on, they will seek out in the future. When a puppy is very young they will recognize only a very small area as their den (a crate is perfect) but as they get older the den will enlarge, some dogs carefully go into the neighbors yard to go the bathroom because they have expanded their den to include even the yard. Keeping the puppy crated when you are not able to watch them, and then repeated trips outside will eventually lead to success.

As the puppy begins to understand what you want, the next problems becomes communication...how can they tell you when they need to go out? What has worked well in our house, is a string of bells on the doorknob, if you ring the bells every time you take the dog out, they can learn to ring the bells to let you know when they want to go out. Some dogs will pick up the bells very quickly and others take a very long time.