Separation Anxiety - More common than you think

Waiting for you to come home

In a pilot study in Great Britain, 40 randomly picket dog were filmed by hidden cameras from the time the owners were getting ready to go, until they owners came back. In addition the stress hormone cortisol was measured in the dogs' saliva, in samples taken prior to and after the dogs had been left alone.
According to the footage, 25 of the dogs appeared to just relax when their owners left. But cortisol levels in the saliva told a completely different story.

It turned out that only 6 of the 40 dogs were unaffected by their owners leaving them. As the footage had show, this did not mean that the other 34 were barking and howling until the owners got back. Many of them appeared to be fine, just lying down waiting for the owner.

Depending upon their behavior combined with cortisol levels they dogs were put into different categories:

• 6 of the dogs, that appeared calm and had low cortisol levels, were labeled "Relaxed".
• 19 of the dogs were labeled "inactive anxious", that meant that from just observing the dogs, you couldn't tell that the dogs were anxious at all. Their cortisol levels showed a completely different picture. They had just as high levels of cortisol as the "active anxious" dogs, i.e. the dogs that were pacing, howling, barking, defecating in the house, chewing the interior of the house etc.
• 15 of the dogs were categorized as "Active anxious". These were then further divided into two groups. The first group of dogs, 5 of the 15, had owners that were aware that the dog had separation issues. The second group, 10 of the 15 dogs, had owners that said they were completely unaware that their dog had a problem. 

These are intriguing numbers. It is horrifying to think about all the dogs that are really anxious of being left alone, but the owners have no idea. This was 29 of the dogs! 19 of which was impossible to tell they had a problem at all! When you have a dog that shows you that it is uncomfortable with you leaving, at least you have a chance to help and train the dog to better cope with it. But if you are unaware, how are you ever going to know your dog needs help? It really breaks my heart.

This is how relaxed your dog should be when you leave it at home.

 In Sweden they have recently passed a law stating that you aren't allowed to leave your dog for more than 4 hours. While I think it's a stupid law since it keeps potentially good dog owners from getting a dog, in light of this study I must say that the law has its merits. But on the other hand, the dogs in the study showed that they were equally stressed about being left alone, if they were left for just a short while, or for a couple of hours. They started stressing the second the owner left.

 If you have a dog that has separation anxiety, you might find my next blog post useful. It will be about prevention and treatment of separation anxiety, Separation Anxiety - Prevention and Treatment.
Never hesitate to contact a dog trainer in your area if your dog has issues. In most cases the problems can be solved by training. And if only training doesn't work, your vet can help you get anti-anxiety medication for your dog that you can give it to get better results from the training.

Source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kd5ikAcUQGE