10-minute behaviour consult: separation anxiety

In first opinion practice, separation anxiety is easily missed because the most important part of the history happens when the client is not present.

In the instances it is identified by owners, advice from poor-quality sources can often worsen the problem. This gives the GP practice a pivotal and transformational role in the separation anxiety picture.

How common is it?

A large proportion of dogs will demonstrate clinical signs of separation-related behaviour at some stage in their lifetime, with a 2024 Generation Pup study finding 46.9% of the participants met their definition of separation-related behaviour at six months of age¹.

Significantly, identification has traditionally relied on indirect evidence on the owner’s return, while video studies show that distress may instead present without obvious signs on return².

Why should we care?

Repeated exposure to unmanageable absence can elicit emotional and physiological stress; even dogs without diagnosed separation problems show measurable behavioural and cardiac changes after longer periods alone³.

Importantly, this can cause wider ripples through the dog’s choices and emotional responses in other areas of life, predisposing them to developing other behaviour problems. Dogs showing separation-related behaviours have been found to display a more “pessimistic” cognitive bias, a judgement pattern associated with a more negative underlying affective state. This can make individuals lean towards perceiving other stimuli as worrying or concerning, which has been shown to improve with treatment for separation anxiety^4,5.

Veterinary teams have a narrow but powerful window in a 10-minute consultation to deliver first-aid advice that tackles three key areas:

1. What not to do

Methods involving leaving the dog to “cry it out” will only aggravate conditioned emotional responses to owner absence and, problematically, can also lead the dog to adopt a state of learned helplessness – appearing to stop the “problem” behaviours while the emotion remains unchanged or worse.

Importantly, owner absence beyond the dog’s current tolerance level results in the same outcomes until the emotional response is resolved. With owners understandably needing to leave the house to, for example, work, this highlights the importance of urgent referral for these cases.

2. What to do

While waiting for referral (which Behavet keeps to a maximum of two weeks for any referred behaviour struggle, with separation cases seen in as little as three days), veterinary teams can guide the owner with several simple interventions that focus on building gentle, but manageable, micro-separations.

Behavet has created an in-depth first-aid advice video for your clients covering everything,  including demonstrating how to start conditioning owner absence. This link can be given directly to your client: https://go.beha.vet/separationadvice

3. Is there hope?

The resounding answer we need to get across to owners is, yes. The right structured plan can consistently improve the struggle, and it can be aligned to, without overly compromising, the owner’s lifestyle, time availability and commitments.

Importantly, this is even true in cases with a longer history of separation struggles. A recent referral case at Behavet involved an 11-year-old border collie presenting with separation anxiety since puppyhood, having seen numerous behaviourists within that time. In three months, he can now be left for periods of 60 minutes, highlighting that lack of success can never be assumed.

Behavet’s large team of veterinarian behaviourists sees 700 canine and feline consultations per month, observing daily transformations. With over 1,500 5-star reviews across Trustpilot and DogFriendly, it’s important that pet owners are aware of just how much is possible with the right plan and team behind them.

To refer a case or explore our other free learning opportunities, head to the dedicated Behavet Vet Portal and sign up for the free Pro Newsletter here:

Tom Mitchell is a veterinary surgeon and clinical animal behaviourist with more than a decade of experience in companion animal behaviour. He is the founder of Behavet, the world’s largest online veterinary behaviour clinic, supporting hundreds of complex cases each month through scientifically grounded, reward-based methods. Dr Mitchell’s work is distinguished by a concept training approach to building emotional resilience, promoting transformation in pets, and advancing accessible, welfare-driven behaviour medicine.