Many dogs experience separation anxiety when they are away from their owners. When left alone at home, separation anxiety can cause dogs to be destructive or bark incessantly.
A dog with separation anxiety is a cause for worry on many levels. Dogs owners have to worry about their dogs mental health, about coming home to a mess they are too tired to clean, or about how their neighbors might react to the incessant barking.
“Separation related problems are the second most common behavioural problem that owners seek help for in veterinary clinics”
Usually, separation anxiety in dogs is treated with drugs like clomipramine and fluexetine or combination of drugs and behavioral therapy. But now a new kind of remedy shows promise – a web application that lets owners calm their dog through videos. A study has found that the web application called Digital Dogsitter effectively reduces separation-related problems in dogs.
Digital Dogsitter is a voice-activated web application that can track a dog’s vocalizations when its owner is not home. When the sound reaches a certain intensity threshold, it records the noise event. It can also automatically play a prerecorded video of the owner to calm the dog as a response to the noise event.
Katriina Tiira, a researcher at University of Helsinki examined how effective Digital Dogsitter was in reducing problematic howling and barking in 40 dogs. All owners who participated in the study reported separation anxiety-related issues in their dogs, especially problematic vocalization.
During a two week training period, dog owners turned on the application (which works via an internet browser) before leaving their homes. The study measured two things – the number of noise events and the duration of vocalizations. These metrics (before and after the training period) were used to determine how effective the app was.
“The mean reduction (in ms) in dog’s vocalization was 95.7%, while the reduction in the number of loud events was slightly smaller 58.2%.”
The study found that vocalization reduced substantially in these dogs, both in terms of duration and number of events after using Digital Dogsitter. Additionally, the researcher asked dog owners if they thought the app helped reduce separation-related problems in their dogs. 68.6% of them said that it did.
“The feedback is played directly after the dog’s behavior (vocalization) and this temporally correct response might give the illusion, that the owner is still taking care of the situation, even though she / he does not seem to be present.”
Katriina speculates that the app (by reacting to vocalizations) creates a feeling of safety for the dogs. Read more about the study here.
