Bringing home a new dog or puppy can be one of life’s most joyous experiences. Then Monday morning rolls around and you’re faced with an impossible task—long hours at the office and a young dog that fully expects to keep the party going. 

Here are five tips for making the transition into every day life as smooth as possible when it comes to leaving your dog home alone.

1. Confinement training

You may want to confine your dog to a smaller section of your home to prevent any mayhem or destruction while you’re at work.  This is particularly important for puppies and adolescent dogs, as they are still testing things out and don’t know that socks aren’t food. A confinement area can be a smaller area in a room sectioned off by an X-pen or baby gate. This space should be free from anything your dog can get into, such as remotes, wires, furniture, and of course, your socks.

Once you have the confinement area set up, take some time to engage your dog with the area by throwing treats in and feeding meals in the area, and including her favorite toys. Never force your dog to enter. It’s vital that she enjoys being here. After you’ve spent some time getting your dog used to her confinement area and she’s willfully going in, you can start closing her into the area.  Start by making these sessions short while you are still doing things in the room, before implementing actual absences.

2. Start early, practice often

If you have the luxury of taking time off when you get your dog, you have the perfect opportunity to start rehearsing alone time before going back to work.  After taking a bit of time to fawn over your new companion, start implementing absences early and often.  There is no better way to have your new dog’s world come crashing down than to set their expectations  for hanging out all day every day, only to leave them for 8 hours when your pupternity leave ends.

3. Building up absences

In addition to starting early and practicing often, we also want to start small and build up absences gradually if possible.  We don’t start our marathon training with a ten mile run if our current exercise regiment is a brisk walk to the fridge.

When first incorporating absences, start by leaving for brief seconds, building up each successive day with longer absences.  Be careful to throw in plenty of short, out-of-the-room absences to your daily training as well—it’s important in the early days with your new dog to teach her that when you leave you’re usually going to be right back.

4. Management Solutions

If you don’t have the luxury of taking a pupternity leave from work, consider looking into a few management solutions while getting your new companion used to being left alone.

Hiring a dog walker to split up your dog’s day can be a great and economical way of managing your dog’s time alone.  If you have a few extra bucks to spend and you typically work long hours, a dog daycare can also be a great way to keep your dog busy while you’re at work. Not only do these options take care of your alone time problems, they also solve your dogs exercise needs.

5. What to do if your dog is having trouble

You know the saying “Hope for the best, plan for the worst”?  It certainly applies to alone time success with dogs.  Sometimes, even when you do everything you can to get a new dog comfortable they still have a hard time being left alone.

If you’ve tried the steps in this handout but notice your dog is still struggling with your absence—clinging to you when you’re home, seeming frantic when you get ready to leave, barking or destroying things or refusing to eat when you’re gone—it’s time to call an experienced trainer certified in treating separation anxiety (that’s us!), for your dog’s sake and yours.

To learn more about our separation anxiety dog training program, click here!