Your Dog Can Learn to Be Alone

When I work with a dog who struggles to be alone, I start by looking at what happens while their person is still home. Can the dog rest while someone moves around the house? Can they stay comfortable if a door closes between them? What do they do when they see their person get ready to leave?

A dog can enjoy following you around and still settle when you leave. What concerns me is the dog who can’t rest once they lose access to you. They might pace, pant, or try to get through a closed door. Some dogs start getting worked up before you’ve even left the house.

I want to teach the dog that they can be comfortable on their own. We start with whatever separation they can handle right now, even if that means I’m still in the room and all I’m doing is getting up from my chair.

First, find out what happens when you leave

I’d start with a camera. An old phone works fine. Point it where your dog spends time or where you suspect the trouble starts. If you already know your dog panics, use a recording from an absence you couldn’t avoid or watch a very small step in real time. There’s no need to leave for twenty minutes to find out what you already know about the first twenty seconds.

A dog who barks twice and goes back to sleep is giving you a different picture from a dog who goes from the front door to the window to the front door for the entire time you’re gone. Watch for pacing, panting in a cool room, drooling, repeated whining, or a dog who keeps scanning the door and never settles. A quiet dog can be distressed, too. Standing rigid and staring at the door for ten minutes tells me more than the fact that your neighbors didn’t hear anything.

Look at when the behavior starts. Does it happen when you pick up your keys? When the door latches? When you actually drive away? Can your dog relax if someone else stays with them, or does it have to be you? How do they do behind a gate while you’re still home? If the crate is the only place you’ve ever left your dog, it’s worth figuring out how much of the distress is about confinement.

Damage around the house can be hard to interpret on its own. On video, you can see whether your dog chewed for a while and then settled or spent the whole absence pacing and trying to get out. Those dogs need different starting points.

Teach your dog to settle while you’re home

Start practicing when you have time to see how your dog responds. I like to begin in the living room during an ordinary part of the day, when there’s no pressure to leave.

Give your dog a place to rest. Teach them how to go to their bed or mat, and practice while you sit nearby. When they can lie there comfortably, stand up and sit back down. Walk over to the counter and come back. Eventually, go around the corner for a second. If your dog pops up every time you shift your weight, you’ve found the part that needs practice. Make the movement smaller.

I pay attention to the difference between holding a down and actually settling. A dog can do a beautiful down-stay with their elbows on the floor and every other part of their body waiting for you to make a move. I’m looking for a hip rolling over, a head going down, or a dog who notices me stand up and puts their head back down. Those are signs I can start to ask for a little more distance.

I also look at how the household runs. Does your dog follow you from room to room, get up every time you go to the kitchen, or investigate every noise? Give them some clear direction about where to be while you do ordinary things. If they hop onto the couch uninvited, I’ll ask them to get off, then send them to their bed. If I use food, I reward settling on the bed. If I reward the dog as soon as they get off the couch, getting on the couch can become part of the sequence that earns food.

For a dog who struggles to rest away from their person, I may pause sleeping in the human bed while we build a good routine in their own. I like couch access by invitation for the same reason. You can invite your dog up for a cuddle and still have a dog who knows where to go when you’re done. If sleeping apart is hard, start with their bed close to yours and build some distance once they’re comfortable there.

Teach your dog to rest in the crate

I like to use the crate as a bedroom, a familiar place your dog can go to rest. If your dog only goes into the crate when you leave, going into it can become one of the first signs that they’re about to be alone. Give them opportunities to use it when you’re staying home, too.

Practice while you’re home. Let your dog get comfortable going in and resting with the door open. Then practice closing it briefly while you’re nearby. You might be sitting on the couch reading or folding laundry. Once your dog can relax with you there, get up and move around the room. Add a little distance before you ask for a lot more time. Keep the release simple, too. Open the door and let it be an ordinary part of the day.

Watch how your dog responds to the crate itself. A dog who is biting the bars, throwing their body at the door, or working hard enough to hurt themselves needs a different setup. A stronger crate can keep a dog inside. It can’t teach a dog to feel safe. If your dog can settle in a dog-proofed room or behind a gate, that may be a better place to practice. Use the camera to check. Some dogs find a gate just as frustrating as a crate.

If your dog is already injuring themselves or trying to break through doors or windows, get help with a plan that starts with keeping them safe. If they’re injured or you suspect pain or another medical issue, have your vet check them.

Practice the things you do before leaving

Your dog can learn the order in which you do things before you leave. Shoes, keys, bag, door. By the time you reach for the handle, they may already be wound up. Pay attention to which part of your routine changes your dog’s behavior. A dog who gets up when you touch your bag and starts pacing when you put it over your shoulder is already having a hard time before the door opens.

Start with the first thing your dog can handle. Pick up your keys and set them down. Put on your shoes and make coffee. Walk to the door and come back to the couch. If the whole sequence gets your dog going, practice one piece at a time. If picking up the keys already sends them pacing, try touching the keys and going back to what you were doing. I want the dog to see these things happen in the course of an ordinary day and have time to relax again.

I keep departures and arrivals calm. When I come home, I put my things down and take a moment to settle in. After some time, if my dogs are calm, I greet my dogs quietly. If they’re already worked up, I give them another moment to settle. I want coming and going to feel as ordinary to them as moving from one room to another. Whether I came out of the restroom after 2 minutes, or I just returned from a 2-week vacation, I enter the room the same.

Practice leaving before you need to leave

Here’s what a first practice might look like. Your dog is resting. You open the front door, step out, and step right back in. You check the camera. If your dog stayed loose, or looked up and went back to resting, you have something to work with. If they jumped up and started pacing as soon as the door moved, go back to the door handle or open the door without stepping out.

Once you have a few easy departures, add a little time. If three seconds is comfortable, a session might include three seconds, then one, then four. Mix in shorter attempts so your dog gets more practice with departures they already handle comfortably. Give your dog enough time between tries to actually settle again. If the dog who handled ten seconds yesterday is having trouble with three today, use what you’re seeing today.

Come back before your dog gets worked up whenever you can. If you misjudged it and your dog is already escalating, return calmly and make the next session easier. I’m happy to wait a beat for a relaxed moment with a dog who’s comfortable and mildly impatient. A dog who’s frantic needs the situation to end. Use what you saw to decide where to start next time. That might mean closing the door for less time or practicing with the door open again.

When your dog can handle longer stretches, think about the parts of a real departure you haven’t practiced yet. Walking down the steps sounds different from standing right outside the door. Starting the car might be a whole new event. Try each of those with a short absence before you add it to the longest one your dog has managed.

Plan for the times you have to leave

Most people still need to go to work, run errands, and keep appointments while they’re training. I plan those absences separately from practice. If your dog can handle only a few seconds right now, decide what support you can arrange for the times you’ll be gone longer.

If your dog can relax with another person there, see whether a friend, family member, or sitter can cover some of the time you have to be out. If your dog is distressed even when someone stays, take that into account before you plan around a sitter. The idea is to give yourself room to teach in small steps and reduce the number of times your dog goes through a full panic in between. Start with the absences you can actually do something about.

Exercise and enrichment still matter. Give your dog a chance to sniff, move, go to the bathroom, and come down from whatever you did together before you expect them to rest. I’ll use part of a dog’s meal to reinforce settling when it helps. If you give your dog something to work on when you leave, check what happens when the food runs out. A dog who finishes breakfast and goes to sleep gives you different information from a dog who finishes breakfast and immediately starts pacing. And if your dog suddenly won’t touch something they normally love when you head for the door, I’d go back to a departure they can handle comfortably.

Look for changes in how your dog responds

The first change you notice might be that your dog stays on their bed when you pick up your keys. Later, they might look up when the front door closes and put their head back down. Keep track of both how long you were gone and what your dog did. If they’re settling more easily at the same length of time, that’s progress.

If you’ve spent months arranging your day around whether you can leave the house, it’s easy to look at a few seconds and wonder what on earth you’re supposed to do with them. I get it. Those seconds give you a place to start. Give the dog a routine they can understand, make the next step small enough that they can handle it, and watch what they do when you give them the chance.

What I want to see on the camera is a dog who can hear you leave, shift around on their bed, and go back to sleep. Once they can do that consistently, you can build toward the stretches of time you actually need to be away.

If your dog struggles when you leave and you’re having trouble finding a starting point, reach out to Cultured Hounds. We’ll look at what happens before you leave, what your dog does once you’re gone, and what you can realistically practice in your home.

Spencer Williams

Cultured Hounds

Behavior, refined.