So, ever since Zim tore up the carpet in front of the door in our room (where we put him when we're out), we'd been thinking he might have some separation anxiety. Eventually, because we also wanted to get someone in on his incomplete potty-training and the fact that we've never been able to crate-train him, we decided to call in a behaviorist.
Well, she came in for a 3 hr consult a week ago Thursday (about a week and a half ago) and we found out a lot of things. First, it seems that Zim does have some separation anxiety but he also seems to have some barrier anxiety. This is why, despite our best efforts, we've never been able to crate train him. According to our behaviorist, he's just not a dog who's crate-trainable (at least not without drugs). We'd stopped trying to do anything with him and the crate (despite his occasional bouts of separation anxiety-induced destructiveness) but now we've decided to completely let it go. It's just not for Zim and that's okay. Other than the separation anxiety, he's actually really good and I think once we get past this he'll be able to be reliably left at home. Second, we found out what we should be doing in order to help him get over us not being home.
The plan is to counter-condition Little Bit into being okay with us not being there. We were supposed to get him a bunch of puzzle games and then leave him in there for short periods. We're supposed to build up until he's okay with longer and longer periods while making sure that we don't leave him home alone so that he doesn't go into panic-mode, which would only reinforce for him how bad it is when we're not home. We're supposed to do it about twice a day.
Well, we've been at it for about a week and a half now and our progress has been . . . mixed. At first, Zim did great. He lasted for 15 minutes with one toy while the behaviorist was there. He then lasted the exact same amount of time when Ben was home alone with him and tried it with about 3. Then, it sort of went downhill. He lasted 12 minutes. Then 9. Then 4. So we decided to try a Thundershirt in conjunction with the counter-conditioning. It's definitely worked, although not as well as I'd hoped. He lasted 15 minutes the first time, then he went down to about 11. Well, he was also crying at the baby gate to the kitchen, so we thought that trying to do this so often (about twice a day) might be a bit much as the whining seemed to indicate his general level of anxiety had increased (weird, because he's really not an anxious dog overall). So we stopped the exercise for about two days then went back to it today with a lot of baby steps. Mostly new toys, the Thundershirt, only expecting about 6 minutes and we'd just gotten back from the dog park. Well, he did great and then he completely collapsed into about a 6-8 hr nap. We can't always take him to the dog park before we do this, but hopefully if we do it more often, along with the shorter time (which the behaviorist suggested when we e-mailed her about the decreasing time) we'll start to see some slow progress.
