Your dog’s bored…
You’ve probably heard that expression before because dog boredom is frequently used to explain away all sorts of dog behaviour problems.
Problems like your dog being destructive and chewing up the house, your shoes or the sofa – especially when you leave your dog alone.
In fact dog boredom is used to explain away many of the symptoms of dog separation anxiety. Symptoms like barking or whining non-stop, or digging up the garden, or even your dog running away.
Because of this explanation a lot of the tips you see to stop your dogs separation anxiety is based around entertaining your dog, or at very least distracting them, which might help, but is not going to get to the root of the problem and offer a cure.
Should You Feel Guilty if Your Dog is Bored?
The worst thing about being told your dogs behaviour is caused by their boredom is that its bound to get you feeling guilty… like you’re not doing enough for your dog. The reverse is usually true but that doesn’t stop us worrying and the consequence of that can actually be to increase a dogs anxiety.
It can also get you focussing on the wrong things when you’re trying to deal with your dogs anxiety. If it was just boredom, you could leave your dog alone with lots of toys and they should be fine, right? That doesn’t happen in reality as many of you already know.
When we start to look for a reason to explain bad dog behaviour we often make the mistake of humanising dogs, then we come up with an explanation that makes sense to us but doesn’t necessarily fit with natural dog behaviour.
In studies of the wolf pack, quite naturally a wolf will spend many hours everyday sleeping and lying around without any evidence of boredom or resorting to destructive behaviour!
Anway, the solutions we’re often given to dog boredom, is to walk them more often, leave them alone for less time, give them toys to play with or feed them. But if you’re trying to stop your dog from scratching up your carpets, or chewing your cushions while you’re out and none of these approaches work – perhaps you didn’t have a bored dog in the first place.
Sadly, separation anxiety in dogs cannot be cured with a quick walk and a chew toy. However if your dog is suffering from separation anxiety there are some simple ways to get rid of it and you can find out how by getting our free report – The 7 Signs of Dog Separation Anxiety by entering you email in the box on the right.
Tags: bored dog, dog behaviour problems, dog separation anxiety, leaving a dog alone
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