Re: how to deal with seperation anxiety

[kizkiznobite]

so when you first brought him home you enclosed him? in an area? and he then got out of that and was rewarded and then he had company all night then you isolated him in a crate after he had learnt there was other options and the response was anxiety yes?

that is the classical conditioning bit

now it has all intensified and has ‘moved on’ and you now have a mix of operant conditioning with the old classical conditioning

he has been taught to be anxious and it is now out of his control – that with lack of training and poor socialisation means you have one very frustrated under stimulated insecure pup

you have few choices really
i would say you need to go right back to day one and remodify all this but that will take hours and patience and cetainly no shouting or negative body language
if he was mine i would dump the essences and get him on at the least st j wort – that will take about 10 days to kick in if it works – failing that i would be speaking to the vet re clomicalm

the other option is to rehome/return to breeder

you cannot now just step in and try and train otherwise – he is mentally conditioned – it all needs undoing then re starting but as i said that takes hours

i rescued a lab that had had a start like this – took me 9 months with the first month being 24 hours a day

sorry if that all sounds a bit harsh but to isolate a puppy on day one and try and instill adult behaviours from that first day with little guidance or play training etc and then confuse him by allowing what is not going to be allowed in the future was asking for trouble – i understand that you had little experience but your breeder should have been guiding you through this – they not a breed for the fainthearted at the best of times

good luck – i hope you can sort it out  🙂