So, Frosty our dog has become more and more anxious and nervous as the days have gone by, even to the point where we were considering adopting a cat to keep him company during the day. Well, after a "house-visit" from the shelter, where essentially a cat comes over to our house for a couple of hours to see if it interacts well with Frosty, we were sure that was the answer. Thomas the Alley Cat was fun, playful, very friendly with us, and very friendly with Frosty. Frosty even liked him, so were set.
The more we thought about it, the more hesitant Mary-Jane and I were to adopt Thomas. We weren't sure how it would work out in the long term, and we were concerned with even if it did work for awhile, "What if eventually Frosty went nuts when we were gone after he was bored with the cat". We didn't want this to be a band-aid solution, so we have postponed any cat adoption...for now.
Instead we are trying something called "desensitization training" which is supposed to help dogs with separation anxiety. This training consists of repeatedly doing things that we commonly do right before we leave that would make Frosty nervous. What it boiled down to was Mary-Jane and I putting on our coats and taking them off, putting on our shoes and taking them off, and grabbing our keys and putting them back down over and over again for about 1.5 to 2 hours. Needless to say WE were definitely desensitized to the procedure, and Mary-Jane joked that Frosty would probably develop hip dysplasia before any desensitizing happened, but in reality, he seemed to become a bit more calm and used to it as time went on.
I'll keep you updated...
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