somerville dog: a weblog

NPR's Weekend Edition yesterday ran a feature story about a new CD, Ask the Animals: Songs to Make Dogs Happy! The album's producer, Skip Haynes, recommends the album as an aide in dealing with separation anxiety:

Our CD comes with instructions, by the way. What we tell people is: 'You should play this once a day for about two to three weeks, and, when you play it, be in the room, or have the animal with you, because they will associate that music with you and quality time, and then when you play it after you leave, it tends to settle them down and help with separation anxiety, and works.'

One of the songs on the album is "You're a good dog." Haynes would like customers to believe that "dogs like being told, 'you're a good dog,' and they understand what you're saying." This is just misleading: Dogs who like being told "you're a good dog," have been told "you're a good dog" repeatedly in conjunction with Good Things for Dogs: attention, treats, toys, head scritches, belly rubs, walkies...

Animal behaviorists and trainers recommend systematic desensitization to reduce separation anxiety in dogs. As dog trainer, Jean Donaldson, explains in Culture Clash,

Systematic desensitization is the same technique used on people who are excessively afraid of spiders or flying in airplanes. The subject is first taught to relax and then introduced to the fearful stimulus at whatever level he or she can tolerate without anxiety while practising the relaxation exercise. Then the stimulus is gradually intensified at whatever rate the subject can handle, always building on success.

Donaldson recommends establishing a "safety cue," as one of the tools everyone who owns a dog with separation anxiety should have in her toolbox. In the course of a training regimen of systematic desensitization, the safety cue, like the radio,

becomes a signal to the dog that only short, non-anxiety producing absences are in store. It is important to understand that it is not the radio, per se, which relaxes the dog but its reliable pairing with tolerable levels of aloneness which establish it as relaxing. This effect can be quickly decimated by putting the radio on and leaving for longer than the dog can handle. Radios are frequently used without any desensitization procedure, usually to no avail. This is because when owners put the radio on to mimic the ambiance when people are present or to "keep the dog company" it immediately loses any power it had by coming to predict anxiety-producing lengths of absence.

A CD of "songs to make dogs happy" is really for people who think that problems can be solved by buying things. How well can a CD work to reduce your dog's separation anxiety if the songs make you want to leave the house?