Koda wrote:

Not to guilt you or anything, but if your husband is still thinking of giving her up, that's the absolute WORST thing you can do. A dog with separation anxiety is petrified that it's going to be abandoned. And well, giving her up would completely play into her fears.

So take a few days, take a weekend, to really work with her on this. I think you'll see some results fairly quickly if you do.

I agree with all of Tori's advice. And with this (above). Frosti was owner surrendered to the rescue TWICE for her sep. anxiety - and I believe that's partly to blame for how bad it was. We seriously thought she would have a heart attack or kill herself trying to get to us. She was covered in scabs and injuries from previous attempts, and mysteriously missing one toe each on her back toes (Vet still can't confirm if it's from an escape injury or born that way).

Also ask the vet about Valerian root drops to calm her down - our doggie daycare owner suggested it when Frosti was at her worst. We never had to use it (we accidentally figured out that having her brother in his crate next to her solved part of the anxiety,plus thundershirt, plus yummy kong - plus small interval crate training) - but it may help in calming the anxiety in the crate - and reinforce that it's a good thing.

Hang in there! *hugs*

FWIW, I would never use a loud noise to offset insecurity in the crate. Delilah would just get louder if that ever happened, not be quiet. She had horrible separation anxiety and the only way to deal with it was a lot of patience and positive reinforcement.

mheath0429 wrote:

FWIW, I would never use a loud noise to offset insecurity in the crate. Delilah would just get louder if that ever happened, not be quiet. She had horrible separation anxiety and the only way to deal with it was a lot of patience and positive reinforcement.

+1

We also put on the TV (we don't have a radio) so that it drowns out the sounds outside and makes her feel like people are in the house. We also leave the lights on.

so did we. Either a fan or TV, typically something we would normally watch. LAw and Order SVU marathons are a must at our house - so it was a soothing sound for Delilah.

The banging on the crate/door method would have scared the literal $#it out of Cheyenne and I don't think she would ever step in a crate again. Odin- we tried everything to make the crate "OK" but the crate wasn't the problem. He just didn't want to be in it. He would bark for hours during the night just waiting to get one of us up. So finally we had to use noise to get him to stop. It was gone after that. It really does depend on the dog and what is making them behave like that. If the dog is drooling that much and panicking- banging on anything to make them settle isn't going to work.

Well... I came in today and the crate was where I had left it this morning and she was in there DRY!!! I have no idea what went differently today but I really hope it finally "clicked" with her!!!!!!

Yay! Congrats! You'll start to have more good days than bad days. Hang in there!