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When you first get a puppy, there is so much to do to introduce them to their new home. From potty training to puppy-proofing, you might feel like your hands are full. But there is one critical step you don’t want to forget — teaching your pup how to enjoy being alone. Although it’s tempting to spend every waking minute with your new puppy, you aren’t doing them any favors. Eventually, you’ll have to leave them on their own. And because dogs are incredibly social creatures, leaving a puppy alone can be stressful. However, with a little time and effort, you can ensure they’re calm and confident whenever they are by themselves.
It’s likely your new puppy has never been alone before. It’s unfair to expect them to go from constant companionship to spending an entire eight-hour workday on their own. Start by teaching them to be alone while you are still in the house. A safe confinement area, like an exercise pen or crate, is perfect for this purpose. If you use a crate or exercise pen appropriately, they will see their confinement area as a place to relax rather than as punishment. Alternatively, you can limit your puppy to a small and safe area with baby gates.
To help your puppy associate this space with good things, feed them meals inside it. If the area is large enough, you can also spend some time playing in there together. To entice your puppy, set aside special toys they only get inside their crate or pen. When they’re happy to enter the confinement area on their own, you’re ready to start alone-time training.
Begin by closing your puppy in the confinement area with a chew toy or other constructive activity, then quietly walk out of the room. Return immediately and reward them with praise and a treat. Repeat the process, slowly increasing how long you’re away each time. In the beginning, even one or two minutes might feel too long for your puppy, but over three or four days, you should be able to build up to fairly long periods.
As the time span increases, return to check on your puppy periodically. If they are quiet and calm, reward them with low-key praise and a treat before leaving to continue the countdown. Don’t make too much fuss when you check on them. You don’t want your puppy to miss you when you leave the room.
If your puppy is crying in their confinement area, you’ve likely started the training before they’ve learned to associate the area with good things, or you’ve left them alone for too long. Don’t make a habit of letting them out when they fuss. Otherwise, you will teach them that whining opens the door and earns attention. Instead, shorten their time in the confinement area to what they can handle, and build the time more slowly.
Remember that confinement in the exercise pen or crate is only temporary while you work on your puppy’s alone time training. Once your puppy is confident on their own, and they understand potty training and the rules of good behavior, you can start giving them access to your home while you are away, one room at a time. The goal is an adult dog that is relaxed, self-assured, and can be trusted with more freedom.
Leaving a puppy alone with nothing to do in their safe area can be a recipe for trouble. Instead, give them something constructive to do whenever they’re in confinement. This will teach them to be happy on their own. A perfect activity is chewing on a chew toy stuffed with food. Toys such as Kongs are excellent for this purpose because the food coming out of the toy will reinforce the chewing behavior. In time, you will end up with a chew toy addict who would rather chomp on their toys than the baseboards.
Other ways to keep your puppy busy when they are alone include providing edible chews like bully sticks or yak milk chews, leaving food hidden around the confinement area, or providing food-releasing puzzle toys. However, only leave your puppy unattended with toys, or edible chews that you know are safe. For example, smaller objects that your puppy can fit completely inside their mouth are a choking hazard. Or objects that can splinter or be broken into small pieces can cause intestinal damage or obstruction if swallowed. Speak to your veterinarian about safe options, and always watch your puppy with any new toy until you are sure they can play with it safely.
When leaving a puppy alone, you can also use a sound machine or heartbeat pillow to provide company. The noise can cover up other sounds that might be more distressing, like honking cars or the garbage truck. In fact, a study from Colorado State University found that music influenced the behavior of dogs in a shelter. However, the effect was dependent on the type of music. Heavy metal music seemed to increase the dogs’ anxiety, whereas soothing classical music like Moonlight Sonata increased the amount of time the dogs spent sleeping. So, select your background noise with care, and watch your puppy to see how they react to your choice.
Use Nap Time To Your Advantage
Make the most of your pup’s need for plenty of rest. As wonderful as it is to cuddle with your sleeping pup, try to use vital nap times as opportunities for your dog to be separate from you when it is likely easiest for them.
Resting in a suitably sized crate is usually the best option as it not only provides a safe resting spot, but when used properly, it will also be a useful housetraining tool.
Start by placing your pup in their crate just after elimination in an appropriate spot and at times when they seem most in need of a nap.
The crate should be near you or other family members. But, over the course of a couple of weeks you should be able to gradually move it farther away.
When your pup wakes up, be sure to carry them immediately to their potty spot.
Use puzzle and chew toys to keep your puppy happily occupied when not engaged in play with you. Dogs, especially puppies who are teething, love to chew. Have a selection of five to ten chew toys on hand for your pup to play with.
Toys that are hollow in the middle and dispense your pup’s food or treats, like KONGs, can keep your dog busy while you walk out the door.
Chew toys that are digestible, such as Bully Sticks, can be a good option too, but you may need to limit how much your dog consumes or take the chews away when they get worn down.
Providing your dog with these engaging chew options will keep them happily occupied when you aren’t engaged with them.
Use a six-foot leash to tie your dog to a stable object nearby and offer two chew toys to keep them busy. Start with your dog no more than a foot or two away, and gradually increase the distance while always keeping your pup in your line of sight.
While they can also see you, this exercise helps prevent your dog from becoming a ‘velcro dog’ and needing to be right near you and follow you about when you are home.
This is a small step that helps make a gradual transition towards your puppy ultimately being able to rest calmly when you aren’t home.
And, in case you’re worried about Riley’s earlier anxiety about Flo, they became good friends. When allowed they would play bitey faces and chase games together for hours. We missed her when she left for her forever home; but then we found Cooper and started a whole new adventure.
If you know the things that will trigger the behaviour – in this case the attention-seeking, boredom-busting screaming, biting, and general being a menace that Flo would quickly have progressed to PhD level if left un-checked – then you can plan ahead to divert, distract and prevent the behaviour from happening, which also means you can change it more easily. Often, by preventing a behaviour from happening, it will drop out of the behavioural repertoire of the dog as other new, and hopefully more successful or acceptable, behaviours take its place.
We teach dogs how to be calm in all our Developing Puppies or Developing Dogs Beginners Life Skills training classes. We also run specific Self Control seminars and workshops. For more information see our classes and workshops page.
How can I get my puppy / dog to calm down, amuse themselves or go to sleep? Something I get asked a lot, usually by exasperated owners who want to spend their evenings relaxing, not fighting off the ever-increasingly forceful, bitey or noisy attentions of their canine companions. For many puppy owners, or those of us who like to take on older rescue dogs with limited training history, finding the off-switch is key to developing a good relationship with our dog.
Flo spent her days with me, and Riley, in my office at work. She got plenty of human contact, frequent visitors, short training sessions and was generally pretty settled at work (although the terror I felt the time I walked back into my office to find her sitting on my desk whilst still supposedly immobile will stay with me forever – like all good behaviour people I took a photo before remedying the situation slowly and calmly ). By the evenings, she wanted to run, play and be a puppy, which she couldn’t do. Of course, by the evenings all I wanted was to chill on the sofa with the dogs and a glass of wine. Teaching her to self settle became a priority.
The #1 Thing to Teach Your Puppy! Home Alone Training
I have an 8-week-old puppy visiting me for a couple of weeks. He is as cute as can be, but what is very apparent is that he has learned to demand bark for attention.
I am teaching him about exercise pens and crate training, which I think is imperative for little puppies, but he has been used to getting attention whenever he wants it, probably from his mother!
Not all mother dogs are like that. My mother dog will ignore the demanding behavior from her puppies once they reach about five weeks old. It’s just different mothering styles of different dogs. Some mothering styles, such as permissiveness, can highly influence a puppy’s beginning, sometimes for the good and sometimes for the not so good.
Yes, there is a certain amount of a young puppy moving away from his litter and trying to deal with the separation. But, in this particular case, this puppy is demand barking, saying to me, “I WANT THIS, NOW!”
How do I know that? It’s all about the context and the sound. He demands a treat when he sits. It’s the same bark when he is inside the exercise pen and he is watching me from across the room. He barks as if to say, “Pay attention, NOW!”
The key here is to teach him to be able to soothe himself and be able to play with himself without someone doing it for him—dog or person.
It is excellent for puppies to spend alone time and be happy doing so. This helps to prevent separation anxiety further down the road. If I respond to his barking, even by looking at him, I reinforce what he wants, which is attention. This particular puppy is not fearful or afraid of being alone; he is demanding he not be alone.
To teach him to do this, I must first ensure his food motivation. This particular puppy was free fed by the breeder, so he doesn’t have much interest in working for food from food-dispensing toys. I think food-dispensing toys are important for him because they teach him to problem solve and it uses enormous mental and physical energy so he will sleep better and accept confinement better. Certain kinds of confinement and regular meals are imperative for house training.
In order to increase his interest in food, I have started feeding him regular meals in the food-dispensing toys. If he is not interested in the toy, he soon will be. I pick it up and give it to him a little later.
To encourage self-soothing, I also need to be sure he has plenty of long-term chewing treats. What I mean by that are things like curly bulky sticks, or other hard-chewing toys that take a long time for him to accomplish. Again, food motivation is the key to making this successful.
I also must ignore all barking and crying. It is not our human nature to do this, so I know how hard it is. But, during those first few weeks, I am imprinting behaviors I want. If I don’t want him to be a demand or reactive barker the rest of his life, I have to stop it now. I must let him know that barking gets him nothing. Quiet gets him the things he wants.
Exercise is the next critical component to self-soothing. In most cases, we tend to overexercise puppies when they are young. I use short bursts of walks in my backyard over small obstacles like larger old branches he must go over or under. This nurtures his self-confidence and problem-solving, too! We go around other large obstacles, as well.
The key to a well-adjusted puppy is to start out teaching him he can be by himself and be happy. In the long run, this helps a puppy to develop confidence and appreciate the time with you even more. It also establishes a strong leadership between you and your pup that will bring you years of fewer behavior problems!
Fran Jewell is an Idaho Press Club award-winning columnist, IAABC-certified dog behavior consultant, NADOI-certified instructor #1096 and the owner of Positive Puppy Dog Training, LLC, in Sun Valley. For more information, visit positivepuppy.com or call (208) 578-1565.