I have a deeply neurotic spaniel who has separation anxiety - whenever she’s left alone she barks/howls the entire time, raids bins/tables/anywhere she can smell the vaguest trace of something interesting (including vegetables, birdseed, live insects, tissues... 🤢) and pees upstairs. She is never, ever left for more than 4 hours, and usually less than this. In the last year or so I’ve started working part time, but my daughter is at home the majority of the time and so is here to keep her company (though she still displays anxiety and will raid and pee if DD is asleep/upstairs).
The big problem is that
A) my work is steadily ramping up and they want to employ me for more hours.
B) from June onwards, DD will not be anything like as available to dog sit.
I need to find a workable solution, but I’m wracking my brains to think of a solution I can see working.
Dog is an idiot on walks - she doesn’t like other dogs, rolls in disgusting things at every opportunity, whinges constantly unless you’re playing her favourite game, and is likely to run back to the car at any point but always towards the end of the walk. A dog walker walking her with other dogs absolutely would not work - she’d hate it. She’s also dreadful on the lead, natch. 🙄
She’s not hugely interested in people other than us, though she might settle with someone once she got to know them, and will whinge constantly if we leave her with someone. She would need to be with someone who is pretty hot on security - she’ll run out of a door, given the slightest opportunity, and would get out of an insecure garden to go looking for us.
All the dog walker/doggy day care solutions only seem possible if the dog is happy with other dogs, and ours isn’t.
I don’t want to turn down a great work opportunity because of the dog’s anxiety, but I’m struggling to know what to do - everything I think of, I immediately think of reasons why it wouldn’t work.
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The doghouse
What on earth to do with my dog??
60 replies
JoinTheMicrodots · 17/03/2019 10:32
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