I have a very hard pup, but she freaks out whenever I leave, even if it is just for 5 minutes. How can I fix this or will she grow out of it?

Hi,

I can't tell you what it means to me to have the invaluable free information on your website. Some dog owners just don't have the funds for purchasing training tapes and videos and what is out there on the market is usually garbage anyway. Thank God there is someone who knows dogs that we can all turn to. I know you must have saved thousands of dogs just by having it there. We humans just have no natural instincts for raising pack animals. We need to be taught.

I have a 14 week old bijon/pekinese. My boyfriend and I had no clue and zero knowledge of dogs when he decided to buy one from a pet store. Now I know that was a bad idea (the pet store). Can't tell anything about the pup that way, but she did not seem too timid nor too rambunctious so we bought her. The first dog for both of us. We wanted a small animal to keep in the house as I work at home. She was 9 weeks when we bought her and couldn't hold her urine all night, so I put her crate in the bedroom with me. She still whined in the crate but settled down when I hung my toe off the bed and stuck it in her crate.

The first real problems came when I tried to leave the house the first week for an hour and a half. I left her in the living room with the TV on and a little water and small amount of kibble in the crate just in case. When I came home, she had not only been whining the whole time but was absolutely stressed and frantic and out of her mind. Truly traumatized from being left alone even with the TV on. I took her out of her crate and talked to her softly but she shook and whined and was stressed for over 10 minutes before she settled down. I read on your site that you can leave a dog all night alone in the garage while it is whining and it learns to be fine, but my dog was really stressed out after only an hour and a half of being alone--I mean not just regular howling or whining, but out of her gourd terrified at being left alone.

Now the crazy thing is, I've learned from reading every available article, Q&A, ebook and podcast on your site that she is a "hard" dog. There is hardly any correction I can give her that she even pays attention to, much less has trouble bouncing back from. The only corrections I give are for biting humans during play. She must have been the pack leader of her litter because she play-bites awfully hard. I hated to do as you said and grab her by the scruff of the neck and shake her, but it finally came to that. She was still trying to bite me as I was shaking her. I had to try this technique 3 separate times as she continued to bite afterward. Each time I would shake harder, until I finally got a cry out of her. She stopped biting me for a minute during play with her toys and then went back to biting me. The fourth time I shook her, I think I must have choked her a little (by accident). She was coughing and gagging for a couple minutes when I set her down (I felt very bad). She then immediately went back to playing with her toys, but this time did not bite me. (Finally!)

Now how can a dog like this be afraid of being left alone? It's not like she is timid of anything. No stranger or other dog makes her afraid (although I don't let her play with or go near any other dog besides my sister's puppy because they play well together).

I have tried to do as you say and get her accustomed to me leaving the room for a few minutes at a time. After almost 5 weeks now, I can sometimes leave the room for 20 minutes as long as she can hear me in the other room, but when I go outside to take the trash cans out and she doesn't hear me in the house, she gets frantic after 5 minutes. Will she grow out of this?

Thanks,
Janeen