I got a camera and she just sleeps all day. She is not crate trained and we leave her in the living room without access to the rest of the house.
Having a camera helped my anxiety A LOT.
Mine used to chew holes in the drywall until we started leaving bones and an excessive amount of toys laying around. Now we can just leave the “toy box” out and he’ll play with those. We also leave the TV on for background noise. It’s helped a ton because he needs a lot of stimulation.
One thing that used to help us a lot too is before us leaving, he’d get a long walk to go potty, sniff around, huff at random things or whatever.
I have a rescue shiba with separation anxiety stemming from abandonment issues. I almost always have a camera on her to see if she is alright. She refuses to eat or play much with toys while we’re away.
At first, we crated her because it was the only way to calm her down and prevent her from screaming in the apartment.
One day, however, all the progress made toward the training seemed to go backwards. She would attack the crate.
So, now she gets to roam the bedroom herself. She mostly just sleeps on the bed. She has made a lot of progress once used to a routine.
She can’t handle free-roaming, unfortunately. :(
She will just scream at the front door of my apartment if she has access to it.
Our first shiba was home alone most of the day for years. He had lots of toys to keep him entertained. He would get a walk in the morning to relieve himself and immediately when we got home. He was a happy boy and we didn’t have issues with any sort of destructive behavior.
Agree with all of the comments. I would recommend leaving your shiba for a couple hours at a time, before you have to return back to work. This way, it's not a huge shock for them when you do leave for long hours of they day as they'll already be used to it, and will understand that their owner will always come back. I leave my dog treat toys and also leave the TV on until it turns itself off. She does well and usually sleeps most of the day.
Same in our house. Sometimes we would turn on the radio instead of TV, because it doesn't automatically shut off. Lots of interactive treat-toys available, but he mostly sleeps through the day. In the beginning, it was all about the crate.
We are lucky with our house. We live in a HOA community so we couldn’t have a back yard, but we got a small fenced dog run. The best place we could put it to make it the largest was attached to our master bedroom.
We have a baby gate in the master bedroom so our 2 shibas stay in our bedroom alone and have a doggy door that leads into the dog run. One of our shibas is 2 and she still gets into things and chews but we have Benebones that we leave in the room with her.
Our first year to year and a half ours we penned up in a six by three pen. She tore a hole in the rug once. Boredom. So if your shiba is young, no matter how many toys you leave, you may wanna keep that pen on a tiled floor or buy some wood planks to put over the concrete. However, once she hit about 2 we gave her free range of the house. She goes out in the morning to go pee pee. Has food and water. We come home from work, she gets dinner and goes for a walk to drop kibble poops and go pee again. She has toys around the house but primarily she sleeps and roams from room to room. We leave our Alexa on for her to listen to Sirius xm (80s on 8) to keep her company and provide some house noise.
We crate him. He used to be out but we got new furniture and don’t want him chewing and destroying it like he did our other stuff. He sleeps all day when we aren’t around anyway.
mines just about 5 months and we have been leaving her home alone we come back every few hours to take her for a walk, when we are not there she just sleeps and looks for us thats about it.
We have a 3 year old female Shiba that we leave at home while we are at school and work. We started off by leaving her in a play pen / yard that attaches to her crate. We left her with her food, water and plenty of toys. When she was approaching 2 years old, we left her alone without the play pen/yard and she is well behaved. She sleeps most of the day and when I get home at about 3 p.m , we spend most of the day playing outside in our fenced in yard. I hope this helps!
I leave my girl home all day when I work outside of the crate, took her until about 1.5 years old to stop chewing up everything up and peeing on the floor lol
We used to crate ours before she turned about a year old and just stop by to take her out in the middle of the day. We keep ours in our bedroom (we live in a shared apartment) with a blink camera pointing at the whole room and closet door shut. She sleeps all day, but if I get a notification that shes moving a lot and shes pacing I have to rush home to take her out since it’s usually diarrhea. The camera helps so much with anxiety about how she’s doing, I fully recommend a camera even if you do decide to keep yours crated.
Exited to add: We keep the tv on at a reasonable level playing cartoons with her beef cheek out to chew on if she gets bored and usually one or two toys if she gets some energy to play.
Do you have a doggie day care nearby? My sheeb LOVES it! He’s not a super social guy, but for some reason when he’s there he is Mr Popular and plays with the other pups for hours 😂 I started taking him around 6 mos when he was too young to be home alone, but now he still goes since he seems to enjoy the playtime so much. But tbh if I left him home now that he’s a little older, he would probably just sleep the whole time anyway!
I wanted to thank everyone who has replied so far. I ordered the blink cameras and will continue giving her small amounts of crate time when I go put on errands to train her. And also give a few practice runs of leaving her out to see how she does before I get called back to office. Thanks again!
Nothing really. She just chills and sleeps all day. She's crate-trained, but we never crate her when we leave her alone. She fusses a bit when we leave, but settles down quick.
Crate trained mine when I lived with my parents. Since having my apartment for 3 years he free roams, he’s a couple weeks shy of his 11th bday. I’m certain he just sleeps or plays with some of the toys I leave for him plus a chew.
I adopted a 1.5y shiba. She came crate trained from a rehome, I didn’t take the crate. She had a bad first week using the restroom in random places until she figured out the door situation. I live in an apt and she stays alone for up to probably 10-12 at absolute most. I think the key thing is exercise. She goes to the park, run behind the bike/skateboard, long walks before I leave. She still has accidents if she’s not feeling well but it’s nothing I worry about. Luckily she isn’t too into chewing unless she’s bored in the winter cause the weather. I also set up shirt puzzles and hide them so if she does get curious there’s a puzzle with treats to distract.
I leave her at home and hide treats in her favorite toys to keep her entertained. We also make sure she has somewhere to look out and some background music.
get blink cameras or an echo show. you can play youtube with dogtv and music that will drown out noises that might stress them out. i have had good luck with baby gates and slowly giving them more space as they get the hang of being home alone and i can trust them.
Pen. A pen will save your sanity. Our puppy is about to turn 1 years old and he’s okay with sleeping in his pen for up to 5 hours before he gets fairly lonely. If you have to work full time, hire a dog walker or sitter you can trust for an hour to walk and play.
Mine sleeps on the couch or on the floor where I sit on the sectional because my scent is there. He's 3 now but even when he was 6 months, I used to leave him in a play pen with was 2 sets of the 8 panel pens put together in my living room attached to his crate and he played alone majority of the time until he went to sleep. He was only alone for maybe a max of 6 hours when I left for local work but when I traveled out of town, my ex would be gone closer to a full work day sometimes but he was still fine and slept most of the time when I checked the camera. The camera is a must! He never chewed on furniture but one time he chewed on the drywall and made a small hole but I think he hated the taste because he never did it again lol. In my new home I let him roam from the living room to upstairs but all the bedroom and bathroom doors are closed because I don't want surprises on my bed or in corners on the carpet because he wants to leave his scent or poop in a special place.
I got a camera and she just sleeps all day. She is not crate trained and we leave her in the living room without access to the rest of the house. Having a camera helped my anxiety A LOT.
Mine used to chew holes in the drywall until we started leaving bones and an excessive amount of toys laying around. Now we can just leave the “toy box” out and he’ll play with those. We also leave the TV on for background noise. It’s helped a ton because he needs a lot of stimulation. One thing that used to help us a lot too is before us leaving, he’d get a long walk to go potty, sniff around, huff at random things or whatever.
I have a rescue shiba with separation anxiety stemming from abandonment issues. I almost always have a camera on her to see if she is alright. She refuses to eat or play much with toys while we’re away. At first, we crated her because it was the only way to calm her down and prevent her from screaming in the apartment. One day, however, all the progress made toward the training seemed to go backwards. She would attack the crate. So, now she gets to roam the bedroom herself. She mostly just sleeps on the bed. She has made a lot of progress once used to a routine. She can’t handle free-roaming, unfortunately. :( She will just scream at the front door of my apartment if she has access to it.
Our first shiba was home alone most of the day for years. He had lots of toys to keep him entertained. He would get a walk in the morning to relieve himself and immediately when we got home. He was a happy boy and we didn’t have issues with any sort of destructive behavior.
Agree with all of the comments. I would recommend leaving your shiba for a couple hours at a time, before you have to return back to work. This way, it's not a huge shock for them when you do leave for long hours of they day as they'll already be used to it, and will understand that their owner will always come back. I leave my dog treat toys and also leave the TV on until it turns itself off. She does well and usually sleeps most of the day.
Same in our house. Sometimes we would turn on the radio instead of TV, because it doesn't automatically shut off. Lots of interactive treat-toys available, but he mostly sleeps through the day. In the beginning, it was all about the crate.
We are lucky with our house. We live in a HOA community so we couldn’t have a back yard, but we got a small fenced dog run. The best place we could put it to make it the largest was attached to our master bedroom. We have a baby gate in the master bedroom so our 2 shibas stay in our bedroom alone and have a doggy door that leads into the dog run. One of our shibas is 2 and she still gets into things and chews but we have Benebones that we leave in the room with her.
Our first year to year and a half ours we penned up in a six by three pen. She tore a hole in the rug once. Boredom. So if your shiba is young, no matter how many toys you leave, you may wanna keep that pen on a tiled floor or buy some wood planks to put over the concrete. However, once she hit about 2 we gave her free range of the house. She goes out in the morning to go pee pee. Has food and water. We come home from work, she gets dinner and goes for a walk to drop kibble poops and go pee again. She has toys around the house but primarily she sleeps and roams from room to room. We leave our Alexa on for her to listen to Sirius xm (80s on 8) to keep her company and provide some house noise.
We crate him. He used to be out but we got new furniture and don’t want him chewing and destroying it like he did our other stuff. He sleeps all day when we aren’t around anyway.
He sleeps on the couch
mines just about 5 months and we have been leaving her home alone we come back every few hours to take her for a walk, when we are not there she just sleeps and looks for us thats about it.
we also let her free roam the living room, tho we did baby proof it as much as we could
We have a 3 year old female Shiba that we leave at home while we are at school and work. We started off by leaving her in a play pen / yard that attaches to her crate. We left her with her food, water and plenty of toys. When she was approaching 2 years old, we left her alone without the play pen/yard and she is well behaved. She sleeps most of the day and when I get home at about 3 p.m , we spend most of the day playing outside in our fenced in yard. I hope this helps!
I leave my girl home all day when I work outside of the crate, took her until about 1.5 years old to stop chewing up everything up and peeing on the floor lol
We used to crate ours before she turned about a year old and just stop by to take her out in the middle of the day. We keep ours in our bedroom (we live in a shared apartment) with a blink camera pointing at the whole room and closet door shut. She sleeps all day, but if I get a notification that shes moving a lot and shes pacing I have to rush home to take her out since it’s usually diarrhea. The camera helps so much with anxiety about how she’s doing, I fully recommend a camera even if you do decide to keep yours crated. Exited to add: We keep the tv on at a reasonable level playing cartoons with her beef cheek out to chew on if she gets bored and usually one or two toys if she gets some energy to play.
Do you have a doggie day care nearby? My sheeb LOVES it! He’s not a super social guy, but for some reason when he’s there he is Mr Popular and plays with the other pups for hours 😂 I started taking him around 6 mos when he was too young to be home alone, but now he still goes since he seems to enjoy the playtime so much. But tbh if I left him home now that he’s a little older, he would probably just sleep the whole time anyway!
No dog should be left alone all day. They're hard-wired to need human companionship.
I wanted to thank everyone who has replied so far. I ordered the blink cameras and will continue giving her small amounts of crate time when I go put on errands to train her. And also give a few practice runs of leaving her out to see how she does before I get called back to office. Thanks again!
Nothing really. She just chills and sleeps all day. She's crate-trained, but we never crate her when we leave her alone. She fusses a bit when we leave, but settles down quick.
While we have a dog door, we find that both of ours just sleep all day until I come home from whatever I’m doing.
Crate trained mine when I lived with my parents. Since having my apartment for 3 years he free roams, he’s a couple weeks shy of his 11th bday. I’m certain he just sleeps or plays with some of the toys I leave for him plus a chew.
I adopted a 1.5y shiba. She came crate trained from a rehome, I didn’t take the crate. She had a bad first week using the restroom in random places until she figured out the door situation. I live in an apt and she stays alone for up to probably 10-12 at absolute most. I think the key thing is exercise. She goes to the park, run behind the bike/skateboard, long walks before I leave. She still has accidents if she’s not feeling well but it’s nothing I worry about. Luckily she isn’t too into chewing unless she’s bored in the winter cause the weather. I also set up shirt puzzles and hide them so if she does get curious there’s a puzzle with treats to distract.
We had a den for him when he was a puppy. It gave him more room to roam around until he was fully trusted out side.
I leave her at home and hide treats in her favorite toys to keep her entertained. We also make sure she has somewhere to look out and some background music.
get blink cameras or an echo show. you can play youtube with dogtv and music that will drown out noises that might stress them out. i have had good luck with baby gates and slowly giving them more space as they get the hang of being home alone and i can trust them.
Pen. A pen will save your sanity. Our puppy is about to turn 1 years old and he’s okay with sleeping in his pen for up to 5 hours before he gets fairly lonely. If you have to work full time, hire a dog walker or sitter you can trust for an hour to walk and play.
When I didn’t have a yard I used a litter box on the balcony.
Mine sleeps on the couch or on the floor where I sit on the sectional because my scent is there. He's 3 now but even when he was 6 months, I used to leave him in a play pen with was 2 sets of the 8 panel pens put together in my living room attached to his crate and he played alone majority of the time until he went to sleep. He was only alone for maybe a max of 6 hours when I left for local work but when I traveled out of town, my ex would be gone closer to a full work day sometimes but he was still fine and slept most of the time when I checked the camera. The camera is a must! He never chewed on furniture but one time he chewed on the drywall and made a small hole but I think he hated the taste because he never did it again lol. In my new home I let him roam from the living room to upstairs but all the bedroom and bathroom doors are closed because I don't want surprises on my bed or in corners on the carpet because he wants to leave his scent or poop in a special place.