Dog day afternoons can be long, lonely for pets left alone: report
BY MISTY HARRIS, POSTMEDIA NEWSMARCH 9, 2011
New research finds a quarter of dogs are being left alone for too long, putting them at risk of separation anxiety, distress and depression.
It can be hard to take a dog's anxiety seriously, least of all when turning on a vacuum cleaner is treated as an act of terrorism. But in one of the largest-ever studies of pet well-being, animal welfare experts report that virtually a quarter of dogs are being left alone so long, so often, that they're at very real risk of loneliness, distress, depression and separation anxiety.
The newly published research finds 23 per cent of canine owners in the United Kingdom leave their dog unattended for five hours or longer on a typical weekday, or don't bother to monitor the time at all; fully one-third of those aged 18 to 24 do so, compared with just 10 per cent of owners 55 or older. "People aren't doing this out of deliberate cruelty," says Elaine Pendlebury, a senior veterinary surgeon with the animal charity PDSA. "They just think they're right."
The U.K. report, issued by the PDSA and research firm YouGov, draws data from 11,261 pet owners — including 4,675 dog people — and veterinary professionals. The study finds 52 per cent of canine owners think a dog should be left a maximum of five hours alone; 17 per cent consider six hours the ideal limit, 15 per cent say eight hours, and four per cent believe a dog is fine on its own for upward of 10 hours (the remaining owners are unsure).
Pendlebury says the study's notion of four to five hours as a recommended maximum is guided by best-practices set forth by the U.K.'s Animal Welfare Act. This side of the pond, however, the question of how long is too long to leave Fido home alone remains a subject of fierce debate.
"There's no research whatsoever on this, to the best of my knowledge," says Stanley Coren, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia and a widely published author on dog behaviour. "Different dogs tend to have different social needs. Hounds, for example, are extremely social. . . . But you take your working breeds and guarding dogs and they're perfectly happy for 10, 12 hours by themselves."
Nicholas Dodman, of thepetdocs.com, contrarily believes that to leave any dog alone for a 40-hour workweek is "a travesty." "It's perfectly reasonable to expect your dog to remain alone for three to five hours," says Dodman, director of the animal behaviour clinic at Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine. "But it's certainly not ideal to have a dog alone in the house every workday for eight hours — especially if no efforts have been made to enrich the environment or there's no canine company."
Dodman notes that crates are fine, provided the door is open or removed — ultimately making the space an optional den — and suggests a TV be left on, and other forms of amusement made available. "Ideally, they shouldn't be left alone; they are, after all, pack animals," says Dodman. "But that's not the real world."
According to the pharmaceutical companies, between 15 and 17 per cent of dogs suffer from separation anxiety, a mental condition for which there are a number of prescription drugs that specifically target pets. A Quebec veterinarian says one of the only ways to properly diagnose such a disorder is by videotaping the dog while it's alone, watching for panting, pacing, barking, elimination and obvious distress.
"In some cases, a dog can't cope with being alone for even 15 minutes," says Enid Stiles, a small-animal practitioner with a special interest in behaviour. "But there are many, many other cases where (regular) dogs — my own included — are perfectly fine being left for eight hours a day. It becomes part of their routine."
http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/afternoons+long+lonely+pets+left+alone+report/4410909/story.html
