Dog nervous with guests?

Does your anxious or fearful dog need to be separated from visitors to your home, but they "freak out" when closed away in another room from you? My dog Pancake struggled with this issue, which made our annual hosting of Thanksgiving and Christmas especially difficult for him, and me.  Luckily, with training, he was able to learn to settle down and relax when in another room from me, despite his separation anxiety. If he can do it, there's a good chance your dog can too.

If Pancake sounds similar to your dog, then they'd probably benefit from some separation training. Here's an overview of the process. You can find more detailed examples featuring Pancake in the video below. 

• Pick where you want your dog to be confined while you have guests. These should be locations where your dog is already comfortable. I discussed teaching your dog to love these "happy places" in this blog. 
• Make a list of behaviors your dog could do when confined that would indicate they are "ok". These are behaviors you'll watch for to judge whether the training is easy enough for your dog, and that you'll try to reinforce when possible. For example, maybe when your dog is relaxed, they sleep, or work on a chew.
• Make a list of behaviors your dog could do when confined that would indicate they are "not ok". These are behaviors that tell you the training setup is too hard for your dog, and they're not entirely. happy being confined. For example, approaching and pawing at a gate or crate door, or barking.
• Choose the difficulty of each training session (e.g. Is your dog closed in the space or free to leave, how far away do you move from them, for how long) so that you get only "ok" behaviors, and no "not ok" behaviors.  

Check out some of Pancake's training sessions here: 

If you try this training, I'd love to hear how it goes- you can shoot me an email at [email protected].