Thursday, December 4, 2014

Separation Anxiety

Since the passing of Benjamin and Luna, Henry has terrible separation anxiety. Like bad. Like it's been weeks since the humans have left the house together sans Henry bad. Ok, so that is an exaggeration, but barely. Henry is ok for the weekday routine. He knows the deal there and manages pretty well. It's the weekends where he kind of spirals out of control. When the routine is not at all like a weekday. He knows we sleep a little later, wear different, more relaxing clothes, spend a more relaxed time at the breakfast table (no rushy rushy) and he knows that he can go MOST places. But it's those OTHER places where he cannot go and when we have to leave him at home where he melts like a snowman in July.

Whether you are "pro crate" or "anti crate" it is important to know that the boys learned to enjoy their crates as puppies. And this was more for their own safety than anything. While we puppy proofed our home, there would still be things that we would not have been able to keep them from had they not been crated. And from mere weeks old, they learned to know their crate as a safe, happy place. And throughout most of their lives, the boys had shared a crate.

Anyway, leaving Henry home alone while we do things together, like grocery shop, run errands, go to the gym, etc has become extremely hard. And there have only been a handful of times over the last couple of months when we have been able to have people time away from the house. Alone. And those couple of times did not turn out very well. With the new crate cam, we have spied on him to see how he's faring. And often, it is not good and we rush home to a worked up pug panting for the return of his people pack.

The latest solution has been to treat Saturdays like a work day. Oy! That means being up bright and early and planning our trip away from home so that it is as similar to a weekday as possible. This did work for the first time last weekend. While Henry did become suspicious since we were more casually dressed and he does know the Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday days better than Monday-Wednesday days, we did manage to fool him. But he did ponder it for a little while and although he almost fully imploded, he did manage to settle himself and it all worked out.

Of course, getting another dog has been suggested and considered, but Henry, we feel, like us, just wants his OLD dogs back. And they are not coming back. We would more strongly consider another dog IF we knew it would help him. But there is no guarantee. And then we'd really have a tough time. Plus, what age dog would we even get? A puppy? No way. Even WE are getting too old to enjoy a puppy! A 5 year old? Hmmm....a dog old enough to have any number of bad habits or various anxiety issues of his or her own. One which Henry and new dog could feed their angst off of? No thanks. A laid back older dog? Maybe. We would do anything for Henry if it helped him feel better. But, when we are out, Henry shows absolutely no interest in any other dogs. Big, small, pug, non pug, he simply does not pay any attention to them.

For now, we will continue to manage Henry's needs as best we can. We have Grammy pugsitting 4 days a week already so we really don't want to burn her out and we can schedule one weekend day to be predominately a stay home day where worst case scenario, the humans take turns running errands while Henry still has one of us there. At least that is the good thing! Henry is ok with either one of his people there. They don't both have to be there! (Luna was a little more specific. She did have a favorite person. So we are lucky that Henry is more easy going in that regard.)