Separation Anxiety

Jefferson has always had fairly severe separation anxiety from anyone and everyone that leaves our house...whether they've been there 30 seconds, a couple of hours, or days.  He gets really upset and runs around barking and shaking his toys at the person who is about to leave (or has just left).  I've tried some of Cesar's suggestions like not paying him any attention when he's acting like this (so as not to give him any kind of response to the unfavorable behavior) and rewarding him when he behaves well, but nothing seems to work. 

So, this past Friday and again today, I tried out a new idea...confining him to the front part of our house...this means he can go in the living room (where he sits at "his post" - aka the couch - and keeps guard all day, watching animals, walkers, mailman, etc), dining room (hoping he doesn't go in there too much though, which you'll understand from the pictures below), and upstairs to the bedrooms.  It worked really well on Friday, but that may have been due to the Beggin Strip cookie I gave him that distracted him while I slipped out the back door :)  I'll have to get the report from Billy about today, since he left the house after me this morning.  Let's hope this will work well for him, as I don't want to have to crate him all day while we're at work.  I'm fine crating him for a few hours at a time while we run errands, go to the gym, etc., but I'd prefer to let him roam the house during the day if possible. 

Our nice bolster pillow just makes me sad...Jefferson takes his frustration about us leaving out on the pillow by dominating it.  Kinda funny but also upsetting because of what he has done to the pillow's formerly nice shape.  And, our bed looks much more made up in the mornings, but he nests on our pillows and comforter, hence the dissheveled look :)

His little nails have done a number on our dining room window sills...he tries to jump up on the windows to see us leaving.  So frustrating!!  Especially since it would do no good to fix them until he's kicked this habit!

And this is tough to see, but our wall under the windows/chair rail molding could stand another coat of paint due to our little terrier charging into the dining room and sliding right into the wall before jumping up as you see below...

He is watching a squirrel on the neighbor's roof, but this is his usual position to watch us leaving (and scracth up our window sills)

Jefferson at his post :)

He has also prompted us to lay all of our couch cushions totally flat so that he can lay on them without misshaping yet another pillow in the house.  But I guess it's good he thinks of this as his round-the-clock "job"

Let's hope this works!! 

Enjoying the Beggin Strip and, more importantly, not caring that I'm about to leave :)

Let's hope today is as successful as Friday!!