The arrival of a puppy at home marks the beginning of its education process. One of the things we must do is teach a puppy to stay home alone. If we do not do this, our dog may suffer anxiety in our absences and this could lead to behavioral problems Best dog training Houston. In this article we will see how to teach a puppy to stay home alone and avoid future problems.
Why doesn’t my puppy know how to stay home alone?
You may be surprised that when you leave your dog starts whining, barking or scratching at the door. Even when we have simply gone to the bathroom for a few minutes! For what is this? The reason for this behavior is because when our puppy comes home an important change occurs: he goes from being accompanied by his mother and siblings all day to a new home where people are frequently absent. Your puppy is simply not used to being left alone . To reverse this situation we will need to get our children used to our absences little by little. And all this with the help of the “calm zone”.
Create a calm zone
The first step to solving the problem is to create a calm zone . This will help them better manage their emotions and be calmer in times when you are not there. If we also leave his favorite toys in it, we will be helping him spend this time more entertaining and it will be much easier for him.
In short, you should find a place in the house that is not a passage area , place a bed adapted to their way of sleeping (circular, rectangular…etc.) with their favorite toys. Enhance its use by leaving treats in it when it doesn’t see you. Practice this for a couple of days until you adjust to using the calm zone.
Teaching a puppy to stay home alone
Once he has a calm area we can begin to teach him to stay alone at home. To do this we will need to create moments of absence and gradually increase them little by little , so that your puppy accepts these moments naturally.
- At first we will start with a brief absence, just 1 minute in an adjoining room by closing the door. You can take advantage, for example, when you go to the bathroom to brush your teeth.
- If our puppy cries, scratches the door or whines, we will wait for him to calm down . This is very important, since we do not want him to understand that in order for us to return he must cry, scratch the door or complain.
- When we meet again we will act naturally (neither ignore nor greet warmly)
- For several days we will gradually increase the time. We will start with 1 minute and if our puppy accepts our absence without problems we will increase to 5 minutes, 10, 20, 30 and so on until we reach 4 hours.