I have a great dog, Laika. I got her from Arkansas Valley Humane Society shelter in October, 2001. I was told, very clearly in fact, that she was a dog with severe separation anxiety issues, and that she will require a lot of patience... And she does, but it's all worth it. Since getting her I spent a fair amount of time searching for separation anxiety information on the net and found a few articles that were interesting. None really proved relevent, though. So this is my attempt at setting down some thoughts, in hope that someone will find them to be of use.
First, let's look at some of the information that I found on the net, followed by some comments that are relevant to Laika. Note that your dog will have its own set of characteristics. I apologize for not giving references -- I have lost the bookmarks for those articles.
Dogs suffer most in the first 10-20 minutes: I have not found this to be the case with Laika. I have stood outside the window observing her, and although anxious she usually stands by the door or in her kennel...
Kennel-train your dog: I tried. Laika seemed to resent staying in the kennel while I was gone. She doesn't mind staying in the kennel while I'm home.
Spend two days in leaving the dog for short periods of time, teaching it that you will come back. Start by leaving the room and immediately returning, and gradually increasing the absences until a few hours. I tried that for two full days, with Laika in the kennel. She became OK with me leaving the room and the house for 5-10 minutes, but she really seemed to hate the kennel. Perhaps Laika was too serious a case for this exercise to work so early in our "program".
Get another pet so that your dog is not lonely. I have found this to be somewhat true. Leaving her with another dog, at least for a few hours, worked OK.
I feel that a short synopsis of what I'm doing with Laika is in order. PICTURES:I thought I'd also include some pictures of the damage that she's caused to my house, mostly for entertainment value. Although some people might be horrified to see it, and some of my friends have said that they'd have shot her by now, I believe that it's all a very small price to pay for a great dog.
The first few days I walked her on a leash, but let her run around freely dragging the leash. I never wanted a leash dog, and felt that the first few days were going to be very formative. I also tied her up in my front yard (since I don't have a dog-safe fence), but that lasted for an hour only -- I untied her and let her run around. With input from many friends, reading books, searching on the internet, I decided that I needed to teach her what I expected, rather than go with half-measures. So from the second day she walked without a leash, and stayed in the yard untied. The good thing about separation anxiety is that she doesn't want to run away :) My task was to monitor her for hours on end, and disciplining her when she left the yard boundary.
Disciplining is a hard thing. I discipline her by doing the alpha dog manouver -- I grab her by skin on her neck, roll her over on the ground onto her back, and kneel over her in a very dominant position, while telling her "NO". That is more than enough, no physical discipline is required. She's petrified as it is...
That said, I admit to having lost my temper a few times, esp. after repeatedly telling her not to poop in my neighbour's yard. One day she went there anyways, after looking at me and clearly disregarding my voice commands (no going there, come here). I walked after her, disciplined her as usual, but then also smacked her behind. I didn't think I did it hard at all, but she was so emotionally hurt that she ran away from me. She kept running down the alley, looking over her shoulder every so often, and not coming back to my calls. I ran after her, pleaded with her, apologized, and after a block and a half she finally came back. I haven't hit her since, and I realized that was a weakness on my part...
Following some of the above tips I started leaving her in the kennel for short periods of time. She seemed to do pretty well (i.e. no wailing, freaking out, etc) for short periods of time. The third day I had her I got stuck in the office for an extra hour, on a conference call, and came home to find that she chewed through the plastic kennel, destroyed most of the blinds in the house, and damaged some of the plants. She must have spent a good length of time running from window to window, jumping on the window sills, trying to look for me through the blinds. I came back to a mess, but was careful to not punish her whatsoever and to assure her that I liked her. She was freaked...
I tried fixing the kennel, but to no avail. I ended up buying a metal kennel at a local farm store, and hoped that would work better. We spent the next two days (i.e. the weekend) with her in the kennel, on a blankie, with toys and treats, while I read my book and left the house for short periods of time. Back to 5- and 10-minute absences... Two days of that didn't lead us very far, at least it didn't seem so at the time. She did seem to get used to the kennel, and I started leaving the door open and requiring her to stay inside. At night I moved the kennel to my bedroom, and made her sleep in it, with the door open. That way I hoped to make her feel it was like a den.
Whenever left in the kennel while I was gone she would freak out, though. She started pulling in anything in reach, and she could move the kennel around the house also. I ended up bolting it to the floor, after loosing some of the couch, a towel, a network cable for my laptop, etc. The laptop survived, fortunately :)
Then we went on a road trip to California. She was splendid on it, and we had a great time hiking, surfing, etc. It didn't do much for her spending time apart from me, other than being tied up while I rock-climbed with a friend, but I think it was great for bonding and establishing a deeper level of trust. We hardly used a leash.
After returning home, I realized we probably slept more nights in the truck than at home, so it'd take a while for her to recognize home as home. From that moment I started taking her to the office for part of the day, and leaving her in the kennel for the other. That worked reasonably well, except that I felt she was unhappy in the kennel. Take a look at her pictures in the cage, recorded by a camera. When left out and told to not follow me around the house, she would go to my bedroom and lay down on her blankie. The kennel also had no food or water, and she was panting and thirsty by the time I'd return. That's when I decided to make the BIG MOVE.
If she was unhappy with the kennel, and with the philosophy that I wanted to trust her loose in the house, I started leaving her outside of the kennel. I had to learn a few lessons, such as preparing the house before I left. I roll up all the blinds, although they're still broken, I used to move the plants to a room I could close the door to, cleaning the table surfaces, removing breakable objects, etc. Eventually I built some shelves over the windows so that she could paw at the windows without destroying the plants. I bolted some of my shelving to the wall so she couldn't bump into it. And.. things worked out pretty well. The biggest damage that she's done since this new freedom was to destroy a few sections of drywall -- not pretty, but hardly the end of the world.
I firmly believe that she'll get used to the notion that it's OK to be left alone in the house. It's been almost two weeks since I started leaving her outside of the kennel, and the damage, overall, hasn't been significant. She's a smart dog, and she'll figure it out. My job is to be patient with her, and encourage her to understand I'll come back...