Seperation

What I'm working on now with Two-Eyes is seperation. We're up to about a minute of seperation (me being out of sight and quiet) and he's doing quite well. I know I'm pushing him pretty hard, and it's a little dicey because it's easy to set a dog like this back from pushing too hard, but at the same time, I'm concerned about his adoptablity with his level of anxiety. We're toeing the line, so I'm watching his behavior pretty closely.

Friday morning, we did a workout in the kennel. He did 20 minutes in the kennel the first time, with me instituting 30 seconds of seperation at a time. I would break up a handful of hotdog pieces and throw them into the kennel just before leaving, that way he'd have something to do while I was gone and so he'd hopefully begin to associate good things with being alone in a kennel. He also ate dinner in his kennel.

He then had a little bit of a break, and then we did 25 minutes in the kennel with a seperation length of 30 seconds to a minute at a time. Again he did very well. He did just a very little bit of whining, but nothing too serious, and he would quickly stop on his own.