Hello and welcome to Talking Dogs. I'm Graham Hall, although you might know me better as the dog father.

I've been working with dogs for over a decade now and for the last years, I've been telling my dog training tales on dogs behaving very badly on television.

Well, now I'm bringing even more of my stories to you directly on this podcast, because off the back of the TV series, people often email me for advice on a certain subject.

Inspired by those curious questions, this is a chance for me to share the answers

and hopefully we'll have a bit of fun along the way.

Later on I'm going to let you in on what I really think about webcams

and the other seemingly exciting and clever technologies that dog owners use these days,

as well as explaining how you could be inadvertently rewarding your dog's attention-seeking

behaviour. But first, I want to talk about separation anxiety, because it's something a lot

of dog owners are going to have to deal

with in the coming months. The whole country's been in lockdown and for your dog that's meant

that you've literally been with them 24-7. As we all gear up to get him back out of the house again,

both you and your dog are going to have to make some serious adjustments. But of course separation

anxiety isn't new.

Lots of people have experienced it for years, long before 2020. And in fact, Elvina in Western

Supermare and her little dog, two-year-old Maggie, they've been dealing with it for quite some time.

So we've got Maggie, a two-year-old dash hound. We got her when she was 16 weeks old.

She's a great dog. She's brilliant when we're at home. Brilliant on walks and her recall is amazing.

But we are experiencing some really bad separation anxiety. It doesn't matter if we leave the house for 10 minutes or an hour. She will continue to

bark, cry, howl, get into cupboards for the whole duration that we are out of the house.

She has access to the dining room and the kitchen whilst we're out but maggie has realized that if she choose the

bottom of the dining room door she releases the bolt at the top which then gives her access to the lounge

...