My dog loves me TOO much!

June 24, 2008 4:29 PM

Help me find a very good dog behaviorist/trainer in the NYC area! Bonus points if they specialize in seperation anxiety.

I have recently moved into an apartment by myself and my 5 year old beagle is freaking out. I can't leave her alone for 5 minutes. A few weeks ago she clawed at a wooden door so badly she destroyed the door and badly sprained her front leg in the process. Its safe to say this case of separation anxiety is severe. The vet gave me some meds to help calm her down while her leg healed but they did nothing so i had to send her home to my parents so her leg could get better. She's returning to me this weekend.

I've done a lot of research and reading about it online and i've tried everything to no avail. I'm ready to hire an experienced and reputable behavior therapist or trainer to help us work through this. Except I don't know of any!

Does anyone in the NYC area know of a good behavior therapist? Extra points if you have experience with the trainer and extra extra points if you have seperation anxiety experience with the trainer!

Contact info that needs to be kept private can be emailed to modernsquid at gmail dot com.

Thanks in advance!

posted by modernsquid to pets & animals (3 comments total)

Here's the contact information for our trainer, who helped us on some severe housetraining as well as general obedience issues. We were very impressed.

Dog Trainers of New York
Garry Gross
Certified Canine Behavior Counselor
[phone]
Member Association of Professional Dog Trainers
Certified by The Association of Companion Animal Behaviors Counselors
www.dogtrainersofnewyork.com
posted by kathryn at 4:44 PM on June 24, 2008

No trainer recommendations, but here's what we did/do with our aussie mix who is extremely human attached.

Buy a couple of kongs or purple squirrels (they have prongs, better for determined treat removal experts). Fill with peanut butter or a wet food, or if you're not having any luck with the usual treat, get canned sardines.

Give dog kong.

Leave room, not the dog's total lack of interest in you.

Freeze kong's overnight or for a couple of hours if you're going to take a while getting out of the house. Eventually the dog associates the kongs with you leaving and a rewarding experience.

The key is to get the dog thinking that humans leaving = happy treat funtime. There is also a kong dispenser on a timer that my sister uses to keep her extremely anxious dog occupied, they haven't had any problems since switching to the kongs when they leave.

We have about 10 kong's in various states of dog destruction now, we keep 5-6 of them charged and ready to go in the freezer and in a pinch we don't even freeze them any more. Scoop of peanut butter or a piece of cheese does the job.
posted by iamabot at 4:55 PM on June 24, 2008

If you don't want to work with Garry for some reason (and he looks just fine from here), you could check out some professional groups - like any other professional groups they have a few bad apples so be sure to do some homework, if at all possible watch the pro run a class and see how you feel about their style before you agree to anything.
apdt.com
dogpro.org

You should also check out Beagle rescue and any beagle clubs in your general area - I know there's some rescue in NJ. Those people are up on beagle ways and pro beagle and will probably have some trainers to recommend.

Also, is she crate-trained? If not, it's time.

Whatever you find with this one issue, it would also be very help to get some basic training. You don't have to get titles in agility, just get a few basics down in a class.

If you feel like a drive, I can name some folks in New Hampshire and Canada!
posted by Lesser Shrew at 7:48 PM on June 24, 2008