Introducing Separation Anxiety (SA) Part 2

 

In part 1 we looked at what SA is and what causes it. If you haven’t read part 1, I strongly suggest you go back and pick it up. In part two, we are going to look at what our training methods are and how examine how they could be applied in human phobias.

 

How do we train for SA?

The main method we use is desensitisation. This is the process of SLOWLY exposing the dog to alone time. If this is done slowly and carefully in measured steps, the dog will begin to learn that the world is not going to fall down on their heads when they are left alone.  People may tell you that they have tried this, and it didn’t work. What they missed out (and bless them, they didn’t know) was that they didn’t know what they were doing, and they screwed it up, that’s why it didn’t work.

 

Let’s look at a human application of desensitisation done badly. Let’s say you have a fear of flying. (Aviophobia!) We’re not talking feeling a bit uncomfortable on a plane here, we’re talking about earth-shattering mind-numbing panic.  So, a hack psychologist tells you that you need to be desensitised to planes and flight. OK, so far so good. Then they say the way to do this is to expose you to flight, so you aren’t scared of it. Not feeling so good now, a big lack of detail here. Then they take you onto a plane, lock the doors, start the engines and just for good measure (to stay on a dog theme) they lock you in a metal cage so you can’t escape. How do you react? You scream & cry. You throw yourself at the cage door. You beat on the door until your hands bleed. You kick at the cage door until you dislocate a joint in your leg. You wet yourself, or worse,  in complete abject panic. (Evacuation of bowels is a normal panic reaction in humans and dogs). In time, when you realise there’s no way you can get out, you may shut down and go into a catatonic state and your psychologist will claim success. Until you see another plane again that is, when you chew through your own arm to get away, but your shrink wont care because you will have paid the bill already.

 

If an SA trained behaviourist were to try and work on aviophobia (we aren’t qualified!) here’s how we may do it…….

 

• Sit in your back garden with you, drinking tea and looking at vapour trails.
• Talk about foreign destinations and how interesting they may be.
• Watch a film / show which had a tiny amount of flight in it.
• We would not talk about aviation’s safety record compared with driving. Why? You just wouldn’t care. Cars never ever fall out of the sky.

For weeks, we wouldn’t even mention the word ‘plane’ It may be months before we were within a mile of a plane on the ground. It may be months again until you got to the bottom of the steps. Even then, we would get to the steps and walk away again, and again and again. Every tiny step forward we took, we would unsure that you were never stressed or panicking. If that did happen, we would take steps back to a point where you weren’t stressed and then go again. SLOWLY.

 

In time, we would get you onto the beach sipping a Pina Colada. You would never enjoy air travel; you would never look forward to it you might even need Prozac or Xanax to help you manage the flight, but you would manage it and you would understand that you would get off the plane safely at the other end.

 

This is the start of how we treat SA in dogs.