So I thought, since I seem to have mastered this issue (I say this knocking on wood of course hehe), that it might cool to share some of the things I have tried and what has worked for us so far!

Now for those of you who know me, you will know that I am a pretty huge Cesar Millan fan. He is brilliant! No kidding! His method of exercise, discipline and affection really is the answer! I've made a few changes, but have based my method mostly on his.

First off, nothing is going to help if your dog isn't tired. A tired dog is a relaxed dog. So here you will need to experiment with how long a walk it takes to drain your dogs energy. If you have a treadmill that works too.

Next you will have to decide whether you will crate your dog, keep him in a pen or section off an area of the house. I keep Al in my office with my parrot (the two of them are buds so I wouldn't recommend this if your dog has a strong prey drive).

Here is a snippet of our morning routine. I wake up at 6:15am and am ready and out the door with Al by 7am. We go for a walk up to the park, around it and back. We get home by 7:50am. Then it's breakfast for Tink, breakfast for Al and then breakfast for me! Then by 8:15 Al is in his crate and I'm out the door shortly after. This schedule has really worked for us, but you may need to experiment and see what works for you!

Try not to give your dog an excessive amount of affection (don't judge me yet, let me finish) right when you both wake up. Get suited up and head out for your walk. Don't make a big fuss about it, just do it. Think positive thoughts!

I'm no expert, I just go by what feels right. What I do know is that "bad manners" as I like to call them are not allowed. You are the leader, so make sure you are in charge of the situation. Trust me, it will make your dog feel a lot better if he knows you are in control of things.

Make sure your dog has some "dog" time too though. I take Al up to the park and let him roam around and do his own thing for a bit. But it's always up to me when we stop and when we go.

After our walk I give loads of cuddles and snuggles to my little guy. Now we can start our day since we have woken up, traveled, had a successful walk and now it's time to eat!

Dogs will often become anxious if they feel hungry when you aren't home. We've experimented on this and can say so with certainty that when Al hadn't been fed beforehand he would whine and if he had he would sleep. Please don't misunderstand me, Alfie is always well fed and never goes hungry!

Once you know you need to start packing up to leave, you need to realize that your dog is watching you. You'll probably notice him following you, maybe he's whining a little bit or maybe he's just staring without blinking... Yep, Al is guilty of all of those behaviours.

The trick here is not to ask why, not to say things like, "He just won't stop!" and not to get frustrated. Believe it or not, if you take charge of the situation and stop thinking it's up to your dog, you can stop these unwanted behaviours pretty quick.

First off, as hard as I know it is, don't feel sorry for your dog. He will pick up on this and start to get anxious. Here is what you need to do:

If you have a computer and a mic, download Audacity and record your dog! Listen to what he's up to!

Now now Al you know you aren't supposed to be jumping up on people... He he...

So I thought I would drop in and give a quick progress report on how Al has been doing!

It was looking a little grim there for a while, but with patience, LOTS of exercise and crate training him again from scratch he now makes no noise at all during the day! Not a peep! He's been consistent too! It's been really nice knowing that he's feeling happy enough to just relax during the day when I'm at work.

We had a little hiccup though last week when Al got really sick and we had to take him to the vet. He had bloody diarrhea and I was really scared that something serious was wrong. Good news though, everything is fine and it was just a reaction to a different flavour of canned food we switched too. Turns out he dislikes lamb as much as I do, who knew? He he... (I'm actually a vegetarian now, but when I did try it that one time I got pretty sick.)

ALSO! Very exciting news! We've signed up for our agility classes starting on Sept 22nd! We are really pumped! I've been working with Al and the one jump that I have and he is a natural! I can't believe how high he clears the ten inch jump!

The only other change that we made was he now sleeps in our room on either his chair (with loads of blankets and pillows) or under my arm in bed (which he does in the middle of the night without waking me up so in the morning I have a little pup under the covers with me haha).

All in all he is such a good boy and I love him to pieces!

So I figured it was probably time for an update on Al's status!

After about a week of recording Al, it looks like we are starting to get a really good handle on his anxiety. Yesterday was his best day yet without so much as a peep. The only sounds he made were the sounds of him drinking, playing with toys and jumping up onto the couch where I can only assume he was sleeping by the nest he made out of all of his blankets.

Things seem to be rolling along in a positive direction now which makes me really happy since separation anxiety is known for being one of the most difficult things to iron out.

I feel pretty stoked that I was able to make good progress on this since I was really doubting my abilities as a trainer when it comes to small dogs. Big dogs have never been as big a problem for me and now I know why! Despite the fact that I preach to people that little dogs should be treated like dogs and not little people, babies or toys, it looks like that may have been what I was doing... FOR SHAME. Now that I see this fault, I have been working to correct it! Don't get me wrong though! He's still my little guy and gets tons of cuddles and lots of love and affection, but only after he has had exercise, discipline and is in a calm state of mind.

I am going to continue recording him a little longer to make sure that things continue to roll along smoothly and then I will post a detailed explanation of everything I've done in the hopes of helping others out there to avoid the same unfortunate problems!

Happy Tuesday!

So progress has been pretty up and down so far. We had one perfect day where Alfie didn't make any sound at all. The whole recording was blank with the exception of my parrot's sweet singing.

The next day he whined and howled for one hour total (in spurts) out of the 5 he was alone for.

Yesterday I tested him multiple times whine doing chores like my laundry and he did really well. Some minor whimpering, but no howling.

His workout schedule is now pretty close to that required by herding breeds and I am now also going to be looking into vitamin B supplements for dogs.

I take vitamin B complex everyday to help with my own anxiety issues and I find that I am much better on days when I have it than on days when I don't and I was wondering if it might help Al with some of his anxiety too. So I'm planning on giving his vet a call and looking into it.

I called the nearest dog agility facility near me and they have classes starting again in the fall and we will be signing up for that. I am planning on picking up my equipment from my mother's place to get him started and see how he does.

We've had some extremely hot weather here over the weekend and it wasn't safe to take Al outside for his longer walk so instead I filled up my bathtub as full as possible without flooding the place and put his little floaty jacket on and let him swim for twenty minutes. He's getting so good!! I'm so proud of him! I do still help him a bit, but he is no longer anxious in the water and will stand and let me massage his back legs.

So overall we are definitely making progress, but I think I will need to hook a mic up to my PC instead since my mac overheats pretty easy and I think my tower will be able to handle the recording time better.

This week we are continuing on with the same plan and I will be recording him every day to see how he does. Fingers crossed we can defeat this issue soon!

So for our first post I thought it would be good to talk about what I am now trying to curb my little guy's separation anxiety.

Alfie doesn't spend a lot of time alone, but when he does, he cries. It's a pretty heart breaking sound. I haven't experienced separation anxiety like this with any of my previous dogs or any of the dogs I've worked with.

So I've done LOADS of research and this morning we've started on a whole new system. Here's my plan of attack:

Dog Daycare
Get him comfortable being away from me while hanging out with other dogs and people.

"Go to your bed."
I'm teaching him the command "go to your bed" and making sure he gets lots of treats, toys and praise any time he goes into his crate to teach him that it's an awesome place to be. That way when I'm out, he has the choice to hop into his crate and feel safe.

A Longer Morning Walk
We were doing about a half an hour walk in the morning from 7:30am to 8am. But now we are doing a 45 to 50 minute walk at a faster pace.

Separate Space
Making sure that he has his own space to be when I'm getting ready in the morning so that he isn't following me around like my second shadow. My plan is to get him target trained so that I can teach him to go to a spot based on a target like I did with my previous dog.

Dog Agility Classes
Alfie has shown me that he is incredibly agile, fast and a weirdly fast learner. I say weird because it's kinda freaky how fast he learns... I taught him "Bang" (the play dead trick) in less than two sessions of 15 minutes.
Classes will start up again in September so we are going to sign up at the same time we go to check out the dog daycare.

Professional Help
If I can't figure this out then I will contact a professional trainer and get some help.

So that's the plan and I sure hope that I am able to improve on his anxiety issues. I am determined as ever and will be watching my own behavior to see if I am contributing to this chaos.

If you are reading this and have any suggestions, please feel free to comment! Alfie and I are welcoming any input at this point!

Thanks!