# Help - barking non-stop when left alone



## juanchaves (Jul 16, 2018)

Hello,

I'm searching for advice on managing my dog's excessive barking when left alone. A bit of background: Torden is six months old. We (my wife, our 8-year old son and I) got him a month ago. We live in NYC. Torden was already housebroken and crate trained by the time we got him. He is adjusting very well to us. We haven't had a single potty accident. Exercise-wise we are doing great. He goes out at least three times a day for long walks, to play at dog runs, run off-leash, and a bit of light jogging (I want to train him as a running buddy but will take it very easy until he's fully developed). He doesn't mind spending time in his crate while we are at home and sleeps through the night just fine. We've been doing a bit of crate time during the day to get him used to it while we are present, hoping he'll feel less anxious when we're not home. However, the few times we've left him alone -Kong stuffed with treats-, he barked non-stop (we've had the first neighbor complaint.) So far, it's been manageable because my wife is on leave and my son is in the middle of the summer break. But that will soon change, and we will need for Torden to spend up to 6 hours alone on a daily basis (three in the morning, then a dog walker will take him out for one hour, and three in the afternoon). We have a Garmin bark collar -your thoughts on it are welcome- that we want to start testing. The only time we used it, all we heard was a heartbreaking mix of barking and whining, which we could tolerate for about two minutes. I'm no expert, but I wouldn't go as far as saying Torden suffers from extreme separation anxiety. Maybe he's just too young a pup and has only been with us for a month. However, I'm worried about the impending sudden change coming up in his routine. What could I do to start correcting and preventing this behavior from worsening? Thank you so much in advance for sharing your experiences and tips.

Chers,

Juan


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## gingerling (Jun 20, 2015)

Find out if he was like this for the first 6 months before he came to you. If he was its a different post. If he wasn't, this is probably temporary and a reaction to the change and ignore it, it should extinguish on it's own. I'm not one for the use of pain in any form for training purposes, so for now, I wouldn't use the bark e collar.


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## Gabica (Jan 20, 2018)

Agree with above. 
In the meantime also ensure that the crate mat he lies on has your scent. Bende used to stress out when alone in the crate, so we ended up after every wash hugging and lying on his mat for an hour (or just had it with us during the night) and that helped. The other thing which calmed him down was a plug in pheromone and there are plenty of puppy relaxing music on youtube we have on when we are not at home. With the music we have also learnt to put it on first thing in the morning, so that he does not associate it with music switched on, parents leaving. We have a camera watching our (now) 2 boys and we check from time to time during the day whether anyone is stressed - one of our sitters used to talk to Bende over the camera mic when seeing him being stressed out. It helped too and it is not needed anymore.


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