[Kevin Eskam]

my black lab is about 5 or 6 years old. i rescued him 4 years ago, and he has been a great dog. however, he is terrible about being left alone. it is getting worse. he has always been crated, and will go in on command, but he goes crazy in it when i leave him ( i only leave for grad school classes twice a week for 3-4 hours total). he barks, wines, howls etc. if i leave him out of the crate, he goes to the bathroom on my bed (to punish me for leaving him i think). He is getting better about the crate now, but he is no longer eating. he is only eating about 1/3 of what he should be eating per day and i cannot figure it out. the vet told me some dogs get so bad with seperation anxiety they do in fact end up starving or malnurishing themselves... any thoughts?

Does he sleep on the bed with you?
Does he walk out the door before you?
Does he have a job for his mind? Or Purpose?
Does he get love before exercize
Do you do alot of Obediance with him? Heel, Sit, Stay? And how do you correct?
Keep your emotions under control, dont let him feed of of them.

It sounds to me like he has dominate personality? Is he submissive? My guess is no.

He needs you to become the leader in the house, he needs structure and needs swift corrections, and no love until his exercize is done, create habits with him, stuff he can count on like exercize time,work time and play time.
No sleeping on the bed for awhile, He is showing dominance by urinating in your bed.
You have to become his leader, Your being a leader gives him security.

 

[Kevin Eskam]

These issues have been shown to be completely irrelevant in terms of authority over dogs. Most of the top obedience trainers allow their dogs to sleep at the foot of their beds and walk out the door before the owner/trainer. In wolf dens, the wolves all sleep on the same level and the wolves leave the den in whatever order they feel like so I'm not sure how this theory of dominance originated.

They may be irrelevent with regular dogs but these dogs are not regular dogs.. They think alittle different. They give a whole new meaning to the word training.
You dont teach a little kid with autisum the same way you teach a healthy kid.


I never said that it was. I wanted to see why the dog was peeing on the bed for the first question, Some of my dogs sleep on my bed too, but they dont pee on it. The second is to see what he is doing with his dog (training)

With a dog with Seperation anxiety, They need structure, Sitting at the door before being given permission to go out is good manners and creates structure, IMO.

Some dogs can be boarderline Autism were the brain connection is not all there, If you watch some of them when you give them a command, they will twich there head a couple of times.