Hybrid working looks like good news for a dog, and for the most part it is. It also produces a specific problem that turns up in this city constantly: a dog that is perfectly settled on Monday, Tuesday and Friday, and falls apart on Wednesday and Thursday.
The cause is not the office days. It is the home days, which quietly teach the dog that company is normal and absence is an aberration.
The trap in the pattern
A dog learns from what usually happens. If somebody is home three days out of five, being alone becomes the exception rather than part of the ordinary week, and the dog never habituates to it. Worse, on home days the dog is often given company, attention and food on demand, which raises the contrast further.
Then Wednesday arrives, the flat empties at half past seven, and the dog experiences eleven hours of something it has had no practice at for four days.
The fix is counter-intuitive: deliberately practise being alone on the days you are at home.
What to do on home days
Leave the flat properly, twice. Not to the balcony. Coat on, keys, out of the door, twenty minutes, back without ceremony. Two of those on a home day keeps absence ordinary. Vary the length so the dog cannot predict it.
Separate within the flat. The dog should not spend eight hours at your feet. A bed in another room, a closed door for parts of the day, a baby gate. A dog that follows you between rooms all day is practising exactly the attachment that makes Wednesday hard.
Keep the same shape of day. Same walk times, same meal times, whether you are home or not. The routine is what the dog uses to predict the day, and a routine that changes with your calendar gives it nothing to hold on to.
Do not be available on demand. Attention, play and food happen when you choose, not when the dog asks. That is not coldness, it is the difference between a dog that can settle and one that checks on you every twenty minutes.
Getting through a day of calls
The practical problems are barking at the lift during a meeting, a nose under the desk in the middle of a presentation, and a dog that has done nothing since seven and is fully charged at two in the afternoon.
- Walk before the first call, properly, with sniffing. A dog that has had thirty-five minutes of real walking sleeps through the morning; one that had ten minutes around the block does not
- Feed breakfast from a puzzle feeder or scattered in the grass, which turns a thirty-second meal into twenty minutes of work
- Give a chew at the start of long calls, so the difficult hour has something in it
- Manage the door. Move the dog's bed away from the entrance, mask corridor noise with steady background sound, and stop reacting to the barking yourself, which teaches the dog that barking produces events
- Teach a settle on a mat next to your desk, paid generously, and use it before the meeting rather than during it
- Plan the afternoon dip. Between one and three most dogs need something. That is the natural slot for a walk, yours or somebody else's
The office days
Whatever you do at home, the office days are the ones that decide whether your dog is comfortable. Eleven hours is outside the range almost every healthy adult dog can manage comfortably, and a dog that has spent four days with company feels it more sharply.
Break the day. A midday walk splits the absence into two intervals, provides a toilet break and puts a pair of trained eyes on your dog in the middle of a day you cannot see. Keep it on the same days each week and at roughly the same time, so the dog can predict it. Predictability is worth as much as the walk.
If your office days move around, say so when you book rather than hoping. A schedule that changes weekly is workable when it is agreed, and a mess when it is improvised on a Tuesday morning.
Signs the arrangement is not working
The signals are easy to read once you know they cluster around the office days. Barking or howling on those days specifically, reported by a neighbour or picked up on a camera. Destruction concentrated at doors and windows, which is escape behaviour rather than boredom. Toileting indoors on those days and no others.
Then the subtler ones. A dog that refuses breakfast on the mornings you dress for the office, which means it has learned to read the signals before you have finished your coffee. A greeting on your return that is frantic rather than pleased. And a dog that cannot settle in the evening even on the days you were home, which suggests the problem has stopped being about any particular day.
Two of those together are worth acting on now. Record thirty minutes after you leave before you decide what you are dealing with: boredom and panic look and sound different, and they need different plans.
The honest version
Hybrid working has been good for a great many dogs in this city, and it has also produced a generation of dogs that were acquired during a period of constant company and have never learned to be alone. If that describes your household, the work is not difficult, but it has to be done deliberately, in minutes at first, on the days when there is no deadline attached.
Start on a home day, this week, with the door closed for sixty seconds. It is a great deal easier than starting on the morning your employer changes the policy.
General information for dog owners in Luxembourg, not veterinary or legal advice. For your own dog, ask your vet, a qualified behaviourist or your commune. How this journal is written and checked.
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