A general statement about puppy training Oahu: In the early stages, a puppy is experimenting. Chances are if you do nothing during a puppy’s experimental behavior, then the puppy will just pass through a particular behavior. However, if you intervene while a puppy is experimenting with something, and you tell the puppy not to do that behavior, now you may be increasing the chance that your puppy will become fixated on a particular behavior. The home page shows a list of unwanted canine behavior patterns. Let me show you one example case from puppy training Oahu.
Puppy training Oahu example case
Caren K. owns a beagle puppy in the Aina Haina neighborhood of Honolulu. She knows that it is important to take her puppy outside. So she takes her beagle puppy outside for walks. While on the walks, the puppy sees some leaves on the ground. The beagle puppy is experimenting and this is his first time viewing leaves. The puppy grabs some leaves in his mouth in a playful way. Caren doesn’t like the idea of her puppy biting the leaves so she immediately grabs the leaves out of the puppy’s mouth. She pulls the leaves from the puppy’s mouth and she tells the puppy “No, no, no! Don’t bite the leaves.”
The puppy releases the leaves from his mouth and they continue walking. There happen to be more leaves laying on the walking path. So, the beagle puppy grabs some more leaves and bites them. He places them in his mouth and immediately, Caren intervenes again. “No, no, no,” says Caren as she pulls the leaves away from the puppy’s mouth. “I told you not to do that. Never do that again,” Caren says. Well guess what that does to the puppy? It makes the puppy more interested in the leaves. There are leaves throughout the pathway. So now as Caren and the beagle puppy go along the path, the puppy is now lunging for leaves as they walk. Each time Caren sees her puppy lunging for leaves, she pulls her puppy away from the leaves. This continues to happen on each walk. The puppy lunges for leaves. Caren pulls the puppy away from leaves. When the puppy grabs some leaves, Caren immediately takes them out of the puppy’s mouth. When Caren goes to puppy training Oahu, she tells the puppy trainer that her puppy is fixated with eating leaves.
This behavior does not have to be isolated with a puppy biting leaves while walking. It is more about how intervention during a puppy’s early experiments can negatively affect puppy behavior. In Caren’s situation, her early intervention causes her puppy to become interested in biting leaves. In fact, Caren’s unintentional results are very similar to how I teach puppy owners to intentionally get a puppy interested in playing with high value toys.
In the early stages of puppy training Oahu, the puppy is experimenting. Caren’s puppy is experimenting with new things. If Caren had not intervened when the puppy first grabbed the leaves, then probably nothing would have happened. The puppy would have put some leaves in his mouth, then he would have dropped them and kept on going. Without any intervention, the puppy probably would have continued investigating other things along the walking path. But the owner was very concerned about the leaves. Caren didn’t want the puppy to be biting leaves and she did everything to stop her puppy from grabbing leaves. The end result was the puppy became obsessed with biting leaves. It is not an unfixable behavior, and the more important message of puppy training Oahu is to realize that a puppy is experimenting. If you do nothing towards a puppy’s experimental behavior, then chances are the puppy will get over that experimental behavior pattern.
I’m moving to a new apartment from a quiet area in Makiki to a slightly busier area in Kaimuki/Kapahulu and starting a new job soon. My 8.5 month old puppy is very clingy and follows me around everywhere, even to the bathroom. She likes to sit, play, lay, and sleep near me (she doesn’t sleep on the bed with me but I keep her bed next to mine. Sometimes when she feels lonely in the middle of the night she’ll put her paws against my bed and whine quietly to get my attention. I don’t usually give in and she’ll eventually leave me alone). She’s usually very quiet so long as I’m with her but she 100% hates being alone.
I’ve tried different methods with varying times to teach her to be alone eg. step out calmly to take the trash out and come back, go do laundry in another area of the property and come back, step out of the car to pick up take out or coffee and come back, go to a one-two hour appointments and come back, have her stay with my co-worker and boss while I go get lunch for myself or runs errands for the company and come back (she’s totally fine with being left with them!), I leave her at the groomers for a few hours and come back, I board her overnight at the vets office and come back. It isn’t working…. In the beginning it would be hit and miss, either she waits and does nothing (no barking or crying), or I come back and there’s a puddle of pee or pile of poop by the door. Now, I can’t take her in the car and step out for a few minutes at all without her being spiteful and smearing poop or pee on the seat (I’ve resorted to covering the seats and not leaving her behind).
As of the past couple of months, I’ve noticed that she started barking/crying as soon as I leave the apartment without her and she would pound on the door for a few minutes then stop. When I walk down to my parked car which is a few floors right below my current apartment, I can hear her barking softly over and over again in between another unit’s puppy’s barking (walls are concrete except for the lanai which I keep the windows open for her to let the fresh air in; she has water and toys and a couple of snacks to keep her busy).
My new place is a little more closed quarters with the other tenants and has jalousies. My new job doesn’t allow me to take her to work with me like my old job. I’m worried since its a new place she’s unfamiliar with in a slightly busier neighborhood that she’ll make a fuss while I’m gone and that the noise will travel more. She’s not a furniture destroyer thank goodness. Her mode of revenge is leaving pee and poop by the door. If she’s really upset, she’ll smear poop by the door (rarely smears at home, more inclined to in the car). I just don’t like that she started to bark/cry and pound on the door now when I leave now. I’ve have other dogs of the same breed before for many years that were all well behaved even when they were puppies but this one is a real handful. Of course every dog is different. …so, what is the best course of action to minimize or cure her of this separation anxiety?
Hi Karen,
The first thing to do: you have to move the dog’s sleeping place outside of your bedroom. The first night, move her bed towards the doorway and restrict her from getting closer to your bed. The second night, put up a pet gate at your bedroom door, so that she can see into the bedroom, but she is on the outside of your bedroom. The third night, move the pet gate so that she is now sleeping in the living room (or the kitchen).
Yes, the dog will cry for not being able to sleep in the same room as the owner. I recommend increasing the exercise during the bedroom removal phase. Take your dog on hiking trails. Or take the dog swimming. These type of activities will make the dog tired and cry less at night when being removed from the owner’s bed. Note: I do not recommend taking the dog to the dog park or wrestling with other dogs to make the dog tired. This will only increase your dog’s chance of acquiring a new behavioral problem: dog to dog aggression.
It’s very important for dogs with separation anxiety to not be sleeping in the same bed nor the same bedroom as the owner. This increases the bond between the dog and the owner to such an extreme level that it makes it difficult for the dog to be left alone.
After you are able to have your dog sleep calmly in a different room, then you are ready for the dog training lesson to solve separation anxiety. The lesson takes approximately five hours. The cost (at the time of this writing, 7/8/2019) is $450 dollars.
I’ve had several people contact me after they’ve gone to other dog trainers to solve this issue. Many of these dog owners complain that they already spent $500 dollars and they did not get any significant changes to their dog’s separation anxiety. Do not expect that any random dog trainer will be able to resolve separation anxiety in your pet. Most dog trainers are bad at solving separation anxiety. My own teacher (an international lecturer and author of eight books on dog training) had ineffective strategies on solving separation anxiety. This inspired me to create my own plan at resolving separation anxiety in dogs and puppies.