Canine separation-related problems: part 3: identifying the emotional component

A primary part of the relationship between owner and dog is its social aspect; both animals are social species, and social bonding is an integral part of the behavioural repertoire of both. Hence, when a dog is introduced into a family to fulfil the role of a companion, for many dogs there is an immediate conflict between the dog's expectation of social companionship and the common human need to leave the home for many hours of the day. In such cases, the social bond may be disrupted as it is incapable of fulfilling the dog's normal, social need.

In the past, ‘separation anxiety’ has been closely aligned to theories about ‘attachment’. In their 2003 paper, Appleby and Pluijmakers described the two basic types of attachment relationship frequently associated with separation problems in dogs as:

• Primary attachment: the continuance of the primary attachment bond to an individual beyond the developmental stage of puberty and being most commonly observed in individuals that have not had opportunities, (because of interruption or prevention of learning) to develop independent behaviour. Such an attachment may occur, for example:
• If the breeding environment is lacking in alternative stimuli, meaning the mother becomes the only salient stimulus within the environment
• If the breeding environment does not enable young puppies to choose to explore their environment independently of their mother
• If a puppy is retained within the mother's environment into the post-puberty period of development.
• Secondary attachment: considered to occur when an individual becomes dependent upon the presence of one or more stimuli (usually social stimuli, but in some dogs this may be because of the loss of a secure environmental base, for example as a result of a house move). Examples of such dependence may be following a fear- or phobia-inducing event during an owner's absence, creating a learnt association between owner absence and the prediction of likely exposure to a negative event, hence intensifying the need for proximity to an owner as a source of coping and safety.

Hyper-attachment to a social base was often considered to be a necessary requirement for attachment problems with dogs, but:

• Dogs are often encouraged by owners to develop an extremely close relationship with them, yet many such dogs appear to cope during owner absence
• Only some of the dogs showing separation-related behaviours exhibit obvious signs of excessive attachment when owners are present
• Some dogs only show separation-related behaviours when an owner's absence falls outside the owner's normal routine (Appleby and Pluijmakers, 2003), for example if they return later than usual.

Social support, through proximity to another social stimulus, may take many forms, but its most basic role is to provide a concept of enhanced coping and an ability to recover more quickly from exposure to stressors (Mills, 2020). However, such support may not be dependent on an emotional bond or attachment.

Affectional bonds may arise in enduring positive social relationships, and in such cases, an animal will make an effort to gain proximity to a specific individual who cannot be substituted by another. The bond is characterised by the desire to achieve proximity and pleasure in reunion, and this is directionally defined.

However, attachment is an asymmetric affectionate relationship (Mills, 2020) defined by the provision of protection or other key resources by the specific attachment figure, with the care receiver being dependent upon the specific caregiver (as in a moth-er-infant relationship). The relationship is focused, specific and provides the animal with a secure base from which it can explore its environment. If an infant loses access to its mother, then it is unlikely to survive; the associated intense distress response may be designated as a panic response, with a different neurological network to anxieties.

As such, when a dog becomes distressed on the departure of an owner but recovers on access to an alternative social stimulus and follows anyone around in their owner's absence, then the owner is not an attachment figure (Mills, 2020).

Can we learn from what we know about human attachments?

Hyper-attachment is no longer described in literature about human separation; instead, such literature focuses on different forms of attachment (Ainsworth, 1979), focusing less on specific ‘disorders’ as expressed by the child, but more on the style of caregiving that the child receives. Four forms of attachment are recognised in children:

• Secure attachment: feeling secure in the presence of the parent; the parent is a secure base and the provider of resources
• Avoidant attachment: the attachment figure is more distant and unemotionally functional, but still provides the necessary resources; the child will often become independent and unemotional
• Ambivalent attachment (sometimes referred to as ‘insecure’ attachment): where the attachment figure is sporadic in their provision of love and security often producing fear and frustration responses in the child
• Disorganised attachment: the caregiver is erratic in their response to the child and unable to provide a secure base to whom the child can confidently return; so, the child both loves and fears the caregiver, leaving the child permanently unsure of how the caregiver will respond to them; seeking support yet scared of the possible response.

In humans, certain forms of care giving styles result in insecure forms of attachment that can result in anger and frustration. Could a dog owner's caring style play a role in creating emotional predispositions that increase the risk of the dog failing to cope when faced with owner absence?

In 2020, Mills suggested that much can be learnt from considering why a dog may wish to be close to its owner and proposed two possible reasons:

• The dog is hyper-attached and experiences a form of extra need for access to the owner
• The dog may not be receiving what would normally be associated with attachment from the owner – it may not be receiving sufficient access to the resources that are normally part of a social bond, such as access or attention, so the dog is trying harder to achieve what it requires.

The nature and caregiving style of owners may be fundamental to the companion dog's welfare, as disorganised caregiving is likely to result in considerable levels of ‘need’, as well as anxiety, associated with the owner relationship. In contrast, avoidant care styles may produce more independent dogs with less requirement of access to owners.

Commonly, an anticipation (anxiety) of reduced competency during owner absence will exist in many dogs during periods of social isolation, but are the neural circuits associated with anxiety the only emotional circuits that are active at such times?

Identifying the emotion – an essential process in supporting dogs with separation-related problems

The term ‘separation anxiety’ implied that anxiety was the only emotion involved in separation-related problems, and that the anxiety was specifically associated with the separation from the dog's owners. The emotion of anxiety has been defined as an anticipation of an adverse effect (Notari, 2009). As ‘fear’ is a reaction to a real and defined adverse stimulus, there is little to differentiate the two emotions and, when considering emotional disorders, many human psychiatrists consider the terms to be effectively interchangeable and look at the two conditions as a continuum (Medeira, 2023).

However, it is highly likely that several emotions play a role in both the development and maintenance of the condition of separation-related problems (Table 1), and research suggests that the emotion that is common to most of the problems reported to occur during owner absence is frustration (Mills et al, 2020).

Because of their innate requirement for social companionship, many dogs will show signs of anxiety (indicating the prediction of an aversive experience) as owners prepare to leave the home. However, this is not proof of hyper-attachment and may merely indicate that there is a prediction that what is about to happen is going to be unpleasant for the dog; it doesn't necessarily mean that the ‘unpleasantness’ (and possible ‘failure to cope’) is purely associated with the loss of proximity to the owner. Nor does the dog's anxiety mean that the dog's likely failure to cope is associated with the owner-dog bond; it may be that the owner's departure is a predictive clue of unpleasant issues that can be predicted whilst the owner is not present (Casey, 2022). Such issues that may have occurred during owner absence may include:

• Exposure to the sound of thunder, fireworks or other loud noises – such as building works, or the sirens of emergency vehicles
• An attempted or actual burglary of the home
• Placement in an area of the home where there is exposure to the activity of noisy household equipment, such as a boiler, washing machine and the like.

In addition, owners may show bias in their assessment of a separation-related behaviour and the signs that owners describe as anxiety, like panting (followed by destructive activity during owner absence), may be initiated by high arousal associated with events other than loss of coping during owner absence. These may include anticipation of an opportunity for play with another household dog (involving the emotion of social play), or an opportunity for scavenging in a kitchen bin or simple puppy environmental exploration, involving the dog's ‘seeking’ emotion. In such cases, the dog is exhibiting behaviours that the owner's presence would normally inhibit. This is just one reason for requesting video evidence as a basic diagnostic tool in separation-related problems.

There are many accepted signs of separation-related problems (Table 1 and Table 2), but most of them may have several potential emotional motivations (Table 1). For example, the dog that vocalises, destroys items and eliminates during owner absence may be highly emotionally aroused because of fear of what may occur whilst it is alone, but it may also be highly frustrated (for example, having dealt with several delivery personnel arriving at the door; the elimination potentially being a conflict behaviour). Alternatively, the approach of the same delivery personnel and the repetitive ringing of a doorbell may result in digging to create a safe hiding place and social panic. Hence, emotions associated with separation-related behaviours can overlap and run concurrently.

If there is a genuine hyper-attachment and a parent-infant type relationship exists between the owner and the dog, the emotional experience can be intensified to the level of a ‘life or death’ threat (Mills, 2020) with the addition of ‘social pain’ (McMillan, 2016). Further, the nature of the role of emotions may shift during a specific incident of separation, for example from initial predominance of frustration to increasing levels of fear (Lund and Jørgensen, 1999). Importantly, de Assis (2020) also found that 52.9% of the large cohort of dogs that were studied presented with depressive-like states, a finding supported by Karagiannis et al (2015) and of considerable importance to canine welfare, as such inhibited presentations of separation-related problems may go unnoticed by owners (and subsequently fail to be represented in statistics representing the incidence of separation-related problems). As such, separation cases are usually far more complex than can be covered by describing the emotional state as ‘anxiety’ and require a detailed assessment of an Individual animal's responses both when an owner is present and during their absence (de Assis, 2020).

The importance of identifying contributing emotions associated with an individual dog's separation-related behaviours

As there are several emotions that are likely to play a role in the development and maintenance of separation-related problems (Table 1), and as they are not mutually exclusive, then their role must be identified in the individual dog (Table 2). The nature of the underlying emotional mechanisms behind the individual dog's behaviour is essential to creating an appropriate treatment plan and, if necessary, to identifying the appropriate pharmaceutical agent to support management and treatment (de Assis, 2020).

It should be noted that separation-related behaviours are likely to show comorbidity with other anxieties, phobias and frustration initiating problems that the dog may be experiencing (Casey, 2018). In addition, veterinary professionals should not overlook the potential for the emotion of frustration and the eliciting thwarting of the dog's needs, to be expressed through ‘learned helplessness’. As dogs are social obligates, this inhibited expression of failure to cope and subsequent frustration may affect a large proportion of dogs whose owners consider them to contentedly remain ‘at rest’ throughout owner absence.

The relevance of social pain?

Studies suggest that social pain is a basic emotional response of mammalian brains and that it is likely to have evolved as a signal that connections to others are weakening or being lost and to motivate the repair of such connections to enhance the individual's health, well-being and the survival of their genes (Bowlby, 1969; Eisenberger and Lieberman, 2005; Massen et al, 2010; Cacioppo, 2011; Cacioppo et al, 2014; McMillan, 2016). Scans of human brain activity show that the networks associated with physical pain and emotional pain run alongside each other and are likely to interact together (Al-Shamahi, 2022); in other studies, the emotion of loss or grief has been shown to cause physical pain and, in some cases, heart damage (van der Veen et al, 2014).

The causes of social pain are considered to include experiences very similar to those identified as resulting in avoidant, ambivalent and, particularly, disorganised attachment styles as recognised in human child psychology (Manteca et al, 2016):

• Being isolated
• Being excluded
• Being rejected or ostracised
• Unwanted separation from a social partner
• Grief following the death of a close companion.

Social isolation has been suggested as one of the most reliable and potent stimuli in producing a stress response in social animals (McMillan, 2016), and social animals have been shown to undergo considerable pain and discomfort to enable them to retain, or regain, proximity to a close social companion (Scott, 1967). It has been suggested that one of the most important effects of domestication has et al (2005) found that the dogs’ capacity to form attachments with humans is functionally analogous to that found in infant humans, and it is now generally accepted that, if allowed to develop, the dogs’ need for human companionship is at least equal to the need for fellow canine companionship (McMillan, 2016).

Conclusions

Coping with separation from an owner is a welfare problem for a large number of dogs, but the reason for failing to cope can vary widely. Some dogs may have an excessive requirement for owner proximity as they have never learnt to cope without the presence of a secure social base; others may need access to owners as they are the recognised providers of necessary resources that the dog requires for the maintenance of its welfare needs; other dogs may have learnt that negative incidents occur during owner absence, or that owner presence assists the dog in coping with exposure to negative stimuli. However, whatever the ‘trigger’ to the dog's owner absent distress, the dog's resultant behaviour, whether active or passive, is dependent upon the activation of one or more emotional system. Although anxiety may be involved in the expression of a dog's separation-related behaviours, the emotion most commonly involved in separation-related problems appears to be frustration. As resolving the dog's emotional needs is imperative to the success of any treatment plan for behaviour problems, the recognition of the emotional systems involved in an individual dog's separation-related problems is an essential aspect of the assessment of the problem.

By determining the initiating and maintaining factors for an individual dog's separation-related problems (see Parts 1 and 2 of this series) and the resultant emotional networks involved, tailor-made treatment plans can be created to support the dog's recovery and rehabilitation. Discussions of such plans will form the subject of the final articles in this series.

Helpful sources of information for veterinary staff

Fellowship of Animal Behaviour Clinicians: Find a Behaviourist | FAB Clinicians (https://fabclinicians.org/find-a-behaviourist/), Handouts | FAB Clinicians (https://fabclinicians.org/handouts/) and Veterinary Q and A Sessions | FAB Clinicians (https://fabclinicians.org/veterinary-q-and-a-sessions/)

Register of Certificated Clinical Animal Behaviourists (CCAB Certification Ltd): CCAB Certification | How to become a CCAB (https://www.ccab.uk)

Lincoln University's Canine Anxiety Scale: The Lincoln Canine Anxiety Scale (LCAS) available from IP Store (https://ipstore.lincoln.ac.uk/product/the-lincoln-canine-anxiety-scale-lcas)

Reconcile: Free Veterinary Webinars: Reconcile free e-learning series on separation disorder for dogs presented by Dr Sarah Heath, the UK's leading veterinary behavioural specialist (https://www.fortehealthcare.com/reconcile-e-learning-series/)

Helpful sources of information for clients

Battersea: Dealing With Stress And Separation Anxiety in Dogs | Battersea (https://www.battersea.org.uk/pet-advice/dog-care-advice/stressed-dog-care)

Dogs Trust: Separation Anxiety In Dogs | Behaviour | Dogs Trust (https://www.dogstrust.org.uk/dog-advice/understanding-your-dog/separation-anxiety-in-dogs)

PDSA: Separation anxiety in dogs - PDSA (https://www.pdsa.org.uk/pet-help-and-advice/pet-health-hub/other-veterinary-advice/separation-anxiety-in-dogs)

RSPCA: Separation Anxiety in Dogs | RSPCA (https://www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelfare/pets/dogs/behaviour/separationrelatedbehaviour)

KEY POINTS

• Hyper-attachment (as defined by Appleby and Pluijmakers, 2003) may be present in an individual dog's separation-related problems, but it is not a requirement of a separation-related problem.
• The nature of the relationship between owner and dog may involve deficiencies that a dog requires to be fulfilled, but an owner is unable to provide, creating a separation-related problem.
• The emotion of anxiety may be present in an individual dog's experience of owner absence, but it needn't be associated with a hyper-attachment to an owner.
• Anxiety is not necessary for a separation-related problem.
• Frustration is the emotion most frequently involved with separation-related problems.
• Effective treatment plans for a separation-related problem will rely on the accurate identification of the emotional systems involved in the individual dog's separation-related problem.