Being a Newfoundland puppy, Sushi is a big bundle of fur even at 12 weeks. It is just a week since her owner's nice house and puppy-free life style met Sushi.

Today her owner's came to ask for some help. She is fine as long as she is with her owners, but as soon as they go out of the room Sushi throws herself at the door and cries. Even if they wait until Sushi is asleep and creep out the room, she panics and throws herself at the door as soon as she wakes up.

They are afraid she will damage herself, let alone the door. Sushi did not leave her breeder and the other puppies until last week. Although she was given lots of attention, 11 weeks is quite old to be going to a new home, compared to the usual six to eight weeks old, so this is making her find the change harder to make.

Together we devise a plan. Sushi needs a safe area she can grow used to where there is nothing she can chew or pull down on herself, then they need to start very gently getting her used to being left.

At first they are just going into the next room for a few minutes and shut the door. If Sushi does cry or throw herself at the door they wait until she has finally gone quiet and then go back in.

I explain that if they give into the crying, even by going back and shouting at her to be quiet they will only make things worse because Sushi will have got what she wanted by crying and the bad behaviour will be reinforced.

They decide not to battle it out all day but to let her run around with them for part of the day and to have just one or two training sessions during the day.

Bedtime is the worst so we plan that they will let her have a good play during the evening but then for the last half an hour or so she they will mentally pull away from her, no touching or talking to her so that when they finally creep off to bed it will be less of a trauma.

She has her bed by a radiator so she will not be cold. It is important to sort this problem out, otherwise it could lead to more problems with separation anxiety later.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.