Having a pet that suffers from separation anxiety can be very tough, but Debbie Morley found a way to bring comfort to her pup; she created a body double.
Global (11 July 2022) – Debbie Morley was alerted by her neighbour that her dogs had started howling all day long. She was perplexed and set up a camera in her home to see what was happening. She realised her rescue dog, who has developed separation anxiety, would howl for the entire time she was away from home. To ease her dog’s anxiety, she came up with a clever idea; to create a body double!
Separation anxiety exhibits as distress and behaviour problems when a pet is separated from its owner. It typically manifests within minutes of a pet owner leaving home. For pet owners that need to work away from home, this can be incredibly distressing for both.
Debbie’s dog Shannow started displaying signs of separation anxiety, but it wasn’t until a neighbour mentioned the constant dog howling that she realised just how bad Shannow’s anxiety was.
Debbie had placed a dog camera in her lounge to monitor Shannow and saw that she sat on the couch and howled for the full eight hours that Debbie would be at work. Shannow’s behaviour also triggered her other dogs, and before long, the entire pack would howl along with Shannow.
Debbie knew she needed to do something. Not just to appease her neighbours but also to bring some comfort to her sad dog. She decided to make a body double to see if that would work.
“So I made dummy me out of old clothes last night as a friend for when I’m out. This morning, after I walked the dogs I rubbed my sweaty hoodie on it, gave it a squirt of my regular perfume, positioned it on the sofa in my lazy tv watching & snoozing pose and left.
They howled for less than five mins, went to sleep with the dummy, woke up when the neighbour’s children went out to school an hour later and had another little howl. After that Shannow snuggled up with the fake me all day and slept mostly, no signs of anxiety and all the other have done the same!”
Debbie feels that the key to this success was her freshly worn clothing used to add her scent to the room. Dogs are not stupid, so they would have known she wasn’t truly there, but a little piece of her was, and so they settled better.
We love that she even went as far as drawing a happy face on her body double.
Do you have an anxious pet? What do you do to ease their discomfort?
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