Yowling when left in the evening

[JudyN]

It's taken going on two years for me to be able to leave Jasper on his own for a couple of hours in the day during the week - though as I work from home and having to go out regularly can be a bit of a pain I maybe wasn't quite as motivated as I could be.

He still gets upset if OH and I go out at the weekend (even if OH leaves first and I leave a bit later) or in the evenings. We had a friend 'babysit' for him one evening a while back, and he was fine. As we don't go out much, we've been lazy about working on this, but now I would really like to crack it (OH joined a band a while back and when they finally get a gig I would hate to miss it).

The last few evenings (not last night as he'd been stressed on the evening walk) we've waited till he's settled down, then given him a kong and left him for 15 minutes. I recorded him and each time he'd be quiet at first, then whined and yowled intermittently, with some quiet gaps of a minute or more. When we came back the kong was half eaten and he wasn't visibly distressed - just pleased to see us back. He's never been destructive when left, and has the run of most of the house.

I'm wondering if we need to go right back to all that leaving for 30 seconds, then 40 seconds, etc., aiming to return before the first whinge, or whether as he's not really distressed we should treat his whining as 'just' complaining and carry on at, say, 15 minutes until he realises that there's no point making a fuss.

[minkee]

I'm very much in the same boat as you, with working from home, and rarely having to go out for anything (what a sad life!). One thing I have been doing though, that is fairly easy to keep up, is putting Scout to bed before us. She sleeps in our room, so I just get up, clean my teeth, wash my face, do bedtime routine etc, then put her to her bed in the room. Then, go back to the living room for half an hour or so before going to bed. She's ALWAYS at the door when I go in, but I can often find a warm spot on her or my bed so she must have settled down a bit. I know I should work harder at the normal SA stuff, but the way I see it is that if I AM going to go out, it will most likely be in the evening, so it has to help a little bit.

I don't really know about your question though, as as you can tell, I'm rubbish at leaving my pup too!

[Flyby]

I wouldn't go right back to square 1, but shake up the routine a little and drop in a few shorter absences, - just so it's harder for them to predict how long you're going to be away for.

[JudyN]

Thanks, Flyby We didn't leave him last night, but have just been out for 10 mins and he was completely quiet apart from one brief whine at around 8 mins. I'm sure we'll get there if we don't get lazy...

Minkee, Jasper tends to take himself off to another room in the evenings anyway - either the study, or up next to our bed where he sleeps at night. It can be a pain to persuade him that he has to come down again to go into the garden before we go to bed! I'm not sure if he doens't like our company, or wants to be in the dark, or just doesn't share our tastes in telly

[ladybug1802]

Hmmm....if it were me I probably would go back to the start again, and start by leaving for 5 seconds and build it up.....the reasn being because Jasper is obviously stressed when being left for periods of time at the moment, so it is unlikely he is just going to snap out of it. It may not be necessary - not sure what others think - but i defintel would go back to the start, having seen how soendin a couple of months doing just that, building up time gradually, really hepled Dylan out of his SA.

[Ari_RR]

Everything is easier when a dog is tired. This is how we built up Ari's ability to stay home alone. We can comfortably leave him for a few hours now at any point in the day, or for the entire evening.
However, before we leave him, we always try to tire him out with an enjoyable exercise - a long walk, or a visit to a dog park..
When we leave - at first he would whine for a few minutes, now he doesn't even whine. He will definitely be looking at us with those sad, soulful ridgeback's eyes... "I love you so much, why do you always leave me..."

He is such a great actor But after we are gone, he just crashes and falls asleep.

Another little thing that was helpful for us - when we leave, we leave quickly... No long good byes.

Cheers,
Eugene