Desensitizing Your Separation Anxiety Dog to Your Keys - Myth Busting
You do NOT have to pick up your keys at random times to help your dog feel better about alone time – that is a widespread myth!
Myth Busting Time – Desensitizing a Dog to Your Keys and Other Pre-Departure Cues
As a certified separation anxiety trainer, the way I help dogs feel better about their people leaving is by very gently, over time – and based on the individual dog’s behavior and body language – help them feel safe about being alone at all and then helping them feel better about the things that predict that (now safe) alone time. I use extremely careful systematic desensitization to the entire picture of humans leaving a dog alone which includes things like keys, locking the door, putting on shoes, and the actual duration of the alone time.
Why is this Myth out there?
If you search the internet, a lot of people and AI summaries will tell you that the first steps to helping a dog who is anxious about or overstimulated by alone time are 1. Get them comfortable in a crate or X-pen and 2. Randomly do things that indicate leaving at other times when you are not leaving – like picking up keys, putting on shoes, or picking up a purse/bag.
I am going to skip over that first one because I did another blog post about it that you can find here: Confinement and Separation Anxiety
So lets dive into that second one: Randomly doing things that usually mean you are leaving.
For simplicity I am going to call these activities “pre-departure cues,” because they are actions or sounds that you regularly or sometimes do before departing and theoretically leaving your dog alone.
The idea behind this suggestion is that you will help your dog be more relaxed about these pre-departure cues because they become so commonplace that they aren’t all that interesting or surprising when you do them before actually leaving. Essentially, you would be trying to teach your dog to unpair the pre-departure cues from the act of departing in their mind. This may indeed reduce your dog’s response to the pre-departure cues and might help them be a little calmer while you are leaving – unless your dog is then having separation anxiety and panic once you have left.
If your dog is experiencing intense emotional and behavioral responses to the alone time itself then this practice will not change that since it is targeting pre-departure, and not the departure or time alone itself. For some dogs with intense separation anxiety this can also backfire if they are still experiencing alone time (if absences are not suspended – for more information see Suspending Absences blog). Instead of unpairing and desensitizing, they may instead become hyper-vigilant and respond to the pre-departure cues every time you do them on the off-chance that you will actually leave.
This advice can be helpful for dogs who are sound sensitive and are experiencing overstimulation from the sounds or around activities at the door, but who DO NOT have separation anxiety. I probably would still do it differently – teach a relax skill, and then focus on relaxation while these sounds and activities happen – but it isn’t the worst thing to try for these cases.
How a CSAT works on Pre-Departure Cues
In my separation anxiety training program, I work on folding theses pre-departure cues into the training protocol itself. This works by first targeting only the essential pre-departure cues that you need for seconds out the door (often shoes, sometimes keys, sometimes just slip on sandals to start) and focusing on being able to interact with and exit the door itself.
Once we are able to make it out of the door for a small amount of time without your dog experiencing too much stress or anxiety – then we start to add in the pre-departure cues one at a time. We might focus on time for a week or two, and then try out adding in one pre-departure cue very carefully in the warm-up steps of our practice. The idea here is that we 1. Get calm alone time and then 2. Include pre-departure cues as predictors of that CALM alone time.
Instead of trying to un-pair the associations with the pre-departure cues, we intentionally WANT our dogs to build an association between the pre-departure cues and this new picture of safe alone time.
Break it Down
This can get super detailed too depending on how sensitive a dog is about different pre-departure events. For instance, we might think of “get my work bag” as a predeparture cue or “exit the door” – but we often have to break these down into way smaller parts to avoid overwhelming our dog.
Get my work bag could break out into – shut my laptop, put the laptop in the bag, put the bag on my shoulder, put my pens in my bag, carry bag to the door – each as their own separate pre-departure cue. What that might look like is having a few warm ups with just putting the bag on your shoulder and putting it back down, or putting the laptop into the bag without picking it up.
Exit the door may include a storm door, different locks, steps and landings, and other little details that a dog could pick up on that mean you are ACTUALLY leaving this time.
There are times when I will cautiously separate a big event into smaller cues to practice with – and if a dog is totally chill with each of them, then we can breeze into the bigger picture much faster. But it is better to be careful and read your dog’s body language and responses to each part to make sure you won’t accidentally overwhelm them with too much too fast.
In Summary
Some dogs will always find keys and shoes a bit exciting because they do predict some awesome adventures – but there is a difference between interest or excitement and overstimulation, anticipatory anxiety, and fear. We want to build positive feelings around activities and sounds like picking up keys, putting on a purse, opening a closet, or zipping up a jacket by only doing them either when the dog is coming with us OR when they feel safe while alone.
Examples
As an example, here are a few Missions from an actual client dog. A “mission” is an assigned practice session. You can see how we have been folding in more pre- and post- departure cues as time goes on while also achieving higher amount of safe alone time. For this specific dog, keys were a BIG deal – so we had to go slowly and carefully at first.
Note that – these missions make it look like only increase in time, but these are snapshots from each week – it is VERY important to vary the difficulty of missions and to write missions based on your own dog’s behavior. Remember that these missions are tailor-made for this specific dog and may not be right for your own dog.
Week 1, Mission 1:
Put on shoes (keep them on through the rest of the mission), walk to door, open a few inches and close again, return to home base
Walk to door, touch the door frame, return
Walk to door, open and step ½ way out the door then back in and close the door again, return
Walk to door, jiggle the handle, return
Walk to door, exit, pause one second from clicking the door shut, open again and return
Walk to door, touch the door frame, return
Walk to door, exit, walk to the stairs and take 1 step down then return
Walk to door, open and step ½ way out and back in, return
Walk to door, open a few inches and close again without exiting, return
Walk ½ way to the door, return
Walk to door, exit, reopen the door by 8 seconds from clicking the door shut
Week 5, Mission 20
Put shoes on (keep on), Pick up keys, walk to door, jiggle handle, return (keys return to their original spot after each step unless otherwise specified)
Walk to door, open and close without exiting, return
Pick up keys, walk to door, exit, pause 3 seconds, return
Pick up keys (keep keys in pocket and quiet after this step and for the next few steps until specified), walk to door, jiggle handle, return
Walk to door, exit, walk down steps, walk away, return by 30 seconds
Walk to door, exit, walk down steps, pause 5 seconds, return (put keys back)
Pick up keys, walk to door, exit, walk down steps, walk away, return by 20 seconds
Walk to door, open and step ½ way out then back in, return
Pick up keys, walk to door, exit, walk down steps, walk away, return by 2 minutes 50 seconds
Week 8, Mission 30
Put on shoes (keep on), Put on bag (keep on), Grab keys, walk to door, open and close without exiting, return
Walk to door, exit, walk down steps, return by 10 seconds
Pick up keys, walk to door, exit, lock, unlock, return
Pick up keys, walk to door, exit, walk down steps, walk away, return by 23 seconds
Pick up keys, walk to door, exit, lock, walk down steps, walk away, return by 50 seconds
Pick up keys, walk to door, exit, walk down steps, return by 16 seconds
Pick up keys, walk to door, exit, lock, pause 2 seconds, return
Pick up keys, walk to door, exit, lock, walk down steps, walk away, return by 14 minutes 20 seconds
