Step 2: how to prepare your dog to be home alone again

With the start of Phase 2, our dog will be home alone again. How can we help him? Answers the dog educator

He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him

If you feel disoriented about resuming some semblance of normalcy in this Phase 2, you're not the only one. Your dog is also suffering from all of this. Sudden changes in routines and schedules make him suffer.

During these almost months of quarantine we spent all the time we had with them, but now the gradual entry into this "new normal" changes everything. Now it's time to retrace the path.

Little by little, we are returning to work and recovering the routines away from home. And the dog will be alone for hours. How can we help him?

We asked Daria Cacciotti, D'ariaDog educator and instructor.

“In this particular period, it is not only us who suffer from imprisonment and changes in habits. Our friends were used to a very specific routine, also given by our pre-COVID-19 lifestyle. After some time it is possible that we have begun to see changes or small behaviors that are different from usual. Now our life is recovering more or less as before, and we must already try to recreate the old routine ”, explains the educator.

How to go back to a completely different routine, made up of schedules, going out and relaxing moments at home alone?

Daria recommends:

✅ We try to go back to making the exits as before, both in terms of times and number.
✅ We begin to work on detachment at home by not letting us follow us everywhere (eg. If we go to the bathroom, let's lock them out, using chews * or kong ** to be given on the kennel when we move around the house).
✅ Give clear moments of activity, play and relaxation both alone and shared (it is important that we do not always stimulate our friend, but that he is left to rest and also have moments of inactivity, when we work, when we fix the house, etc.).
✅ We do not always respond to their invitations to play or requests for interaction (this, attention, does not mean always ignoring them, but finding the right balance between activity and moments of inactivity)

All these small indications, even if generic, are important to help our dogs not to find themselves projected again into a new management of the day, but that they can arrive guided and accompanied by us.