Routine -and Some Tidbits about Seperation Anxiety

Everybody is doing really well in foster care. Jasmine continues to be comfortable, non-whiny, but has the odd bad day or morning that she starts the frantic pace. After making sure it's not a pee or poo issue, I put her back to bed and she happily stays there with the door open. She is welcome to come out when she's feeling better/more relaxed. The other dogs don't really pick up her stress, but I want the majority of her experiences in the home to be positive. The more she is allowed to pace/be whiney, the more she'll find those acceptable behaviours. Of course they're part of her getting past some past life troubles, but the more she can be comfortable, the less 'bad days' she has. In the week she's been back, she's only had one off morning, and by afternoon she was feeling better. Bottom line: it's working for her.

Zephyr has turned cuddly on me, and is a frequent couch potato with me when I get home from work. If he was more playful with other dogs (he'll dance around with Lemon here and there, but everyone else he just ignores), he'd remind me even more of Beckett. Zephyr's an excellent dog. He has excellent dog skills that have been refined here. He is excellent on his leash, excellent in a crate -right now as I'm writing he's decided 8:30 is much too early to get out of bed on Saturday morning and has returned to his crate for another snooze.

He's a dog that will do well pretty much anywhere. I'm hoping someone else will see that soon. But I enjoy him, and I wouldn't be against the long, long fostering.

DimSum and Migo are also doing well. DimSum has almost become a full 'terrier' type dog now. She, like Chowmein, doesn't have that real edge a terrier has, but she's turned into a bit of a bug, and you can really see her personality come out. She's basically Chowmein without the super cockiness Chow had a couple of weeks in. And absolutely not one sign of guarding anything.

Migo is driving me a little nuts, but he is still a good boy. His biggest problem here is that he (most of the time) doesn't understand he is to play appropriately inside. He is a ping-pong ball. From one piece of furniture to the next, from toy to dog, to wall. Bounce, bounce, bounce. Lemon has given up telling him off. Beckett just ignores him and wants nothing to do with him. I have DimSum and Migo on schedules that don't see them out together except for at night, so luckily he's drained by then, but my patience is wearing thin sometimes with him. Now don't get me wrong, he's a good dog, he's not 'high-energy', indeed he's more of a happy medium energy, but he needs to learn the difference from outside/daycare play and inside play. Like a child who doesn't understand his or her 'inside voice'.

Throughout the week it isn't really a problem with Migo, as part of his stint in foster care is making sure he is crated 4-5 hours a day (even if I'm home) to minimize the possibility for seperation anxiety. It is not realistic that most adoptive families are home 24/7, so it is in the dog's best interest to be okay spending time alone. Both Migo and DimSum do this alternating times. Jas and Zephyr have always liked their crates, so they just stay home, and when I'm gone I close them. Neither of those two have a lick of seperation anxiety and haven't from the start. But with the young ones, it's important I don't foster the idea that I'm around ALL THE TIME. Sure, sometimes I am here when they are away, and sometimes I just want to let them out, but they aren't really my dogs, I need to do the best I can by them in order for them to transition smoothly to their new families.

So Migo goes for a half hour walk in the morning with everyone, and comes back and is crated about 8-12:30. He then goes to daycare in the afternoon, then comes out for his hour walk after work and is out for an hour or two at night with the other dogs, when he is calm and tired, and not bouncing off the walls. Most of the time he finds a cushion with Beckett and zonks while Lemon and DimSum are having playtime round 2.

DimSum goes for the same small walk, and then comes out and stays out until about 12:30 or so, and then is away until about 4:00pm when Jerrad gets home from school. Then out for the walk. Then she's with the other dogs till bed. She'll start having some daycare days too, but is quite content with her morning, and walk. She's also a dog that is great with her family, but doesn't make new friends fast.

I'm sure there are questions as to why the dogs are away when I am home to watch them. It's a fair question. In the beginning, I pretty much never put the dogs away or even alone. Honey developed a bit of seperation anxiety near the end of her foster stay with me, and at about the two week mark with her sister Toast, Toast had quite a bit of seperation anxiety -boy could she howl-. But, when I went to address the issue, I found that really, I created the issue. To her, I'd been around all the time for two weeks, and suddenly was going somewhere without her. It was in her routine that I was there all the time.

So I've changed my patterns, learned from that experience. I've found that the 4-5 hours of time they are away from me makes them better dogs for it and because I am home for the first couple of days, I can easily pop in to check that they are okay, or settle down any noise. I can work on it basically. We don't necessarily start right away with 4-5 hours either, but build up to it.

It also helps if a movie comes out that I'd like to go see, or if the car has issues like a couple days ago, when circumstances made it so that everyone was stuck home for about 5-6 hours. This is just another form of training -being away from their people.

If you start the seperation period right as they come, they are much less likely to develop seperation anxiety than if you spend a week or two straight with them and suddenly start going away. They are creatures of habit, like us, and resist change.

If you already have some problems with seperation anxiety, I suggest starting a gradual departure. Even if its just to a different room and closing the door. One hour, two hours, build it to what you need. Putter around the garden by yourself, play endless spider solitaire. Declare some independence. You give them what they need: companionship, exercise, training. But you also have to give them a sense of being okay on their own -and you the ability to do more except stay home with the dogs.

Seperation anxiety is a HUGE pain the butt. So hopefully, this process will help out the dogs when they go into new homes. And that's really, to me, what fostering is about. Setting the dogs up for success!