Rehoming dog

[littlepeaegg]

I feel utterly dreadful. I will try to shorten this so it doesn't take too long.

We have a dog which we got as a puppy three years ago, "Z". He is amazing and such a good dog. No issues at all.

We then decided to rescue a pup "O" a year ago. He didn't have the best start to life. He was ten weeks old when we took him home.

He is amazing, such a beautiful boy. Everything about him is great. Except he has MAJOR separation anxiety.

We paid for puppy classes, we have since paid for 1-1 behavioural training. Nothing has helped. We are prisoners in our own home.

If we leave the dogs; if we have a family night going out for a meal etc, we come home to pure destruction. I mean, carpet ripped up, sofa ripped up, doors chewed. It's on going.

We cannot crate train him, as we have been told by the Vet and behaviourist trainers that he will just harm himself.

We have exhausted every possible option.

The only option left is training him. But this is a very long process. The lady from Blue Cross came over yesterday to lay out our options.

The training will mean us staying in 24/7. He cannot he left alone at all.

We do not have family or friends near by. So we can't ask them to pop over to watch O if we need to pop out for anything.

The BC lady said if we were to leave him in this process, it would erase all the work previously. So he cannot be left alone at all.

Luckily my partner has his office at home so that is one positive. But he also works away. So if I get called out for work, and my partner is away, O would be left alone.

I just don't think we have the time to realistically do this training. The BC lady told us this isn't a quick fix, it can take years.

We have a son who is 8, we like to do things as a family and it's not always possible to bring the dogs. Our other dog Z is absolutely fine left alone for a few hours. So no issue there.

But is it fair for my son and as us as a family to now have to stay in constantly? Am I being unreasonable? Or has anyone else got any recommendations for us.

This is a HUGE thing, we have not made a decision yet. It's not being taken lightly either as we love O. But it's putting a huge stress on us as a family, and there is a lot of tension most of the time.

When we do go out, we are anxious and cannot relax as we know we are coming home to carnage.

We walk him daily, we make sure he has high value treat for when we do leave. We leave jumpers to smell is us, tele is on. Our other dog is here too.

The lady at BC has said if we did want to rehome, they do a direct home scheme. Where we would meet the potential new owners first, go for a walk with O etc and decide if we think O would benefit from them. The BC said this happens a lot with separation anxiety, as it's not a quick fix and is a very hard thing to train.

Any ideas? AIBU? Thank you x

Separation anxiety is one of the most difficult dog issues and, even with training, often it does not improve.

Have you spoken with a specialist vet? Sometimes medication can help lessen the stress and make training more feasible.

Otherwise I think you may have to rehome the dog but given the severity of his separation anxiety, it may be a challenge to find him the right home.

Separation is a really hard issue to fix and can take months and months to sort out. To start with it does mean not leaving the dog. At all. If that’s not something you can commit to then you won’t be able to cure the problem. It’s an awful situation for you but you want him to eventually be fine to be left so you have to make the right decision for him.

Stick with him, your husband works from home, make it work

@Pedipalppywoowoo yes, but as I said, he goes away a lot too. Sometimes it can be for two weeks.

He is away from today until mid next week. And with it being half term this means my son is going to miss out on doing things.

@Booboostwo yes, I forgot to mention that he takes Xanax. But doesn't seem to do much at all.

@Wolfiefan yes you are right. Rehoming will be the very last resort as he is such a beautiful dog.

But it's the commitment I am worried we do not have the time for. He has cut his nose this morning, and it's devastating to know he's this upset when we leave him. But sometimes we do not have the choice, as like I say, we do not live close to friends and family.

If you can’t commit to not leaving him then you can’t keep him. It’s so awful but every time he is left will leave him having a kind of panic attack and will further convince him that being left is terrifying and he will never recover.

You say you got him at 10 weeks and have had him for a year - were there any warning signs of this developing when he was younger?

Separation anxiety is the worst. We have a gorgeous orange roan cocker with life long separation anxiety - she is now 8. Non-stop howling rather than destructiveness. I can count on one hand the number of times my DH and I have gone out together as a result. When he works away we spend a fortune on a dog crèche - and if we need to go out in the evening and nobody from family is around to help, we pay a dog babysitter - even if just an hour. It is a big nuisance, very limiting and also very embarrassing to have to explain to your friends - who won’t understand. You look like a mad family. Also v expensive. In your shoes I would bite the bullet and rehome.

Would you "re-home" your child if he had separation anxiety? Would you want to be re-homed if you had anxiety?

The fact of the matter is YOU chose to take the dog on, you brought him into your home/life/family, it's shameful now to turn around and say you want to effectively ditch him because it no longer suits you to have him.

My comment won't alter what you are going to do but in future please don't home an animal unless you're fully committed for life, it is purely selfish to abandon an animal, you think his anxiety is a burden now? Just imagine how he will feel if he is sent away with strangers.

@LittleMissTeacup yes, we have been working with him for 6+ months and his anxiety hasn't improved.

What is this bollocks about you can’t crate train him? That’s probably one of the best things you could do, IMO. I’m amazed that any self respecting vet would say this. Have you tried?

I presume you’ve done the very tedious leave for 30 seconds, then one minute, building to 10 minutes etc?

@WagtailRobin You are making this sound like we are making an easy choice here...

No, of course I wouldn't re-home my child. My child has special needs. I do think it is slightly different to re-homing a dog... even though he is very much part of our family. Don't you think that statement is a little ridiculous?

O has had these anxieties for more than half a year. We have exhausted all our options. We do not want to rehome him. We really don't. But when your house is costing a fortune to fix, and we feel like we aren't meeting our dogs needs, it is very, very difficult.

We hate the fact that when we leave him, he is worrying and anxious. It makes us feel awful. But, we do need to have our life too. We can't always take the dogs with us everywhere; although when we can, we do.

But if we want a family trip to the cinema, or a bite to eat, we come home to part of our house destroyed, and also a very anxious dog.

Do you not think for a moment, that possibly finding him a home where someone can give him 100% of their time would be better for him? Putting our issues aside here, and thinking about O. If he could live somewhere where they already possibly have had dogs with separation anxiety or that in fact can stay home literally 24/7 or with him 24/7. Do you not think that would benefit him?

As at the moment, I do not think we can commit to being with him for 24/7. I work/uni, my son is at school, my partner works full time.

Yes, we did think about this when we decided to get another dog. But how the hell could we have known this was going to be the outcome? We already have one dog who is perfectly comfortable and happy. We obviously thought our second dog would be too. And it is so, so sad that he isn't.

What do you suggest we do if we do not rehome him? Because right now I can't give up University and my job to stay with him 24/7. I do not have anyone I can sporadically ask to come and sit with him for an hour here or there.

@Cherrysoup We tried crate training him when we first had him home with us. As our other dog was and he loves his crate. O never got on with his crate at all, we really tried to persevere with it. We aren't sure if it's because he was found in a bucket with a lid closed shut.

But; we have suggested we try crate training slowly again; three behaviourists and our vet has advised us against this due to him harming himself. This can be him trying to escape and hurting his paws/nails and also damage to his mouth. Apparently dogs with separation anxiety can not be enclosed in small spaces as it just brings them more anxiety. O has already got sores on his nose from sticking it under the door.

How is he in the car? One of mine doesn't like being left but doesn't care about being in the car.

Obviously that's only really a solution for winter time but it allows you a bit more freedom?

@pawsies the lady from Blue Cross asked us this too! He absolutely hates the car!!

But, from her advise, we are going to try and see if we can get him to like it! I think we may buy a crate for the boot, and make it cosy for him. She has said to just randomly pop out with him in it. 5 minutes, 2 minutes, 8 minutes etc but make sure we give him something tasty to do in there.

So I think we are definitely going to try that. But at present, he really can't stand the car! Not sure why either.

How big is he? We have a jack Russell who has developed terrible separation anxiety over the last couple of years, we think it's due to her age though as she is now 13. She used to be crated but started destroying the metal cage, we were worried about her harming herself so tried putting her in a spare room where she destroyed the vinyl flooring. It got to the point where she had issues even when we were in another room at bedtime. In desperation I bought a children's travel cot to "crate" her safely so she couldn't hurt herself, it was our last option. It actually worked and she loves it, we fed her in it at first to get her used to it and connect it with pleasure. I have no idea why she finds it OK but it worked literally overnight. Might be worth a try.

'the only option left is training him'

I think you've had some good advise along with some bad advise and are feeling overwhelmed and perhaps a little confused.

Firstly, you absolutely can and should crate train. Crate trained dogs are generally more confident being left alone as they have their safe space. No crate trained dog will injure themselves. If there is even a risk of injury then the dog isn't being trained correctly. Of course, you can't just buy a crate, throw the dog in and close the door but that is not how crate training works. I hope this has been explained to you.

If Xanax doesn't work have you tried other remedies (thunder vest/DAP/Valium/Prozac....)? As with humans sometimes the right medication is not always the first one tried.

Lastly, yes, SA training is a long process (though relatively straight forward) and training may not be effective if the dog is left alone while training but that doesn't mean the dog needs to be with you 24/7. Dog Sitters and doggy day care could be options depending on whether the dog objects to being left without human contact or being left without specific humans?

Separation Anxiety is my specialist area...

Yes, its tedious, yes it involves not leaving your dog to experience the anxiety, whilst you work on it.

The work arounds are that you use dog sitters, day care, friends, family.. whoever you can, to look after the dog when you can't be there.

I have had a few cases take years. Most cases take more like 6 - 9 months, however there are no guarantees (and beware anyone telling you that they can guarantee anything).

The first step would be Clomicalm unless you can get your vet to agree to Fluoxetine (it isn't licenced and so they have to try the licenced option first, Clomicalm, unless they have very good reason for not doing so) - personally I feel it is the better drug and still don't understand why it isn't licenced here yet...

Alongside Fluoxetine you can also use Trazodone - I like both in combination, again you'd need to discuss this with your vet and it won't help without a behaviour modification program.

The actual training itself.. is not hard... its tedious though. Lots of note taking, lots of short, repetetive behaviour modification sessions, and regular (for some of my clients, every other DAY initially) contact sessions (usually remote, online, video chat etc) with your behaviourist to go through what you've done, tweak beh. mod. routines, alter bits of your daily routine etc.

I teach clients how it all works, with the eventual view that they can go off and finish the job on their own.

They may be with me months or over a year, but once they are 'released into the wild' (and they can come back for one off sessions if necessary) they should know enough to no longer need me!

My success rate is high, around 90% and I work with clients all around the world, but... it is a serious undertaking, it will happen at the dogs pace only, and it is not cheap (mostly due to the costs of daycare/sitters etc rather than my fees, though they are a consideration as well!).

If you can't do it, I think it is reasonable to rehome, we can't all fix everything - but do so after being fully aware of what might be necessary. It may actually be relatively easy to fix, I have had some cases that looked really dire, that were sorted in a month or two!

We’re 7 years into this exact situation with our rescue dog. Nothing - and I mean nothing - has worked. We now have 2 children and would love to move house but I can’t risk another destroyed home.

Our dog gets left in the kitchen/conservatory when we go out (where he sleeps at night) to minimise destruction opportunities and we dog-proof as much as possible (bin removed from room, nothing on work surfaces or table etc) but he still attacks the door with a vengeance and makes a complete mess. Every. Single. Time.

He is rarely left on his own for more than a couple of hours and walked A LOT but it makes no difference.

No solutions here (sorry!) but will be watching this thread with interest.

What have you done so far to get him used to being left? Or did you just assume he'd be okay and leave him with your older dog?

We have a dog who dislikes being left and it is hard but the solution isn't to just go out and leave him anyway!

If you don't have friends and family to help out, can the dog not go with a walker or to daycare?

@littlepeaegg I really feel for you. We have 2 dogs. Ddog1 has been with DH since a puppy and is really well socialised, can be left alone etc. Back in Dec last year we rescued Ddog2 who was 8 months, he developed separation anxiety and would cry no matter how long we left him, although he was great in the crate overnight.
We spoke with Ddog1 daycare provided and we worked with her. By dropping him off at her house 1. We knew he was safe, 2. He got a little crate training during the day and 3. He learnt that when we leave we will come back.
He loves doggy daycare and has an amazing bond with the owner. We can leave him, in his crate as he is still a cheeky little chewer on occasions with no anxiety from him at all (note we don't do this that frequently but even a trip to the shops would have been a nightmare with crying before).

So my thoughts would be, is there a daycare (make sure they are licensed) who you could speak to and see if they can help? It's a bit like leaving your baby at a nursery, eventually they realise you do pick them back up. Doggy daycare also had loads of hints and tips about all the signs they pick up on that we don't know we are giving off, so we had a bit of homework too.

No, you need to make it work. You can’t just ditch a dog after a year because he doesn’t suit your lifestyle. If you got him as a young puppy, you must have done something to give him the anxiety in the first place.

I just think: if you dont want him, who will, now hes not a puppy anymore, and he'll be up against all the other dogs to be rehomed who dont have problems?

I have an unconventional solution for you (but I'm pretty entrepreneurial about setting up groups when they dont exist, you might not be feeling up to it): why dont you set up a local relief group for people with puppies and/or problem dogs via FB? The idea being you help each other out with each others dogs when you want an afternoon/evening/day off?