Beagle Pro | Leaving Your Beagle Home Alone

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The Beagle Home Alone

Overview

Most Beagle owners can not be home all the time, and you cannot take your dog with you to all places that you need to go. Owner wonder how to leave a Beagle home alone...

When will your Beagle be old enough to handle being home?

What do you need to do to help your dog cope with Separation Anxiety?

How can you set up the environment to best keep your Beagle happy when you are not home?

How Long You Can Leave Your Beagle Home Alone

How long you can leave your Beagle home alone will depend on the age of your dog.

Ideally, when first bringing your dog home (especially if you are getting a puppy) you will want to have at least a month with your Beagle to train him or her for housebreaking and also to cope with your absence.

If you are not able to have this time, it will be important to set up your environment to keep your Beagle as happy as possible and to not counteract any house training that you have begun.

When in the process of housebreaking, it is best if you can have a friend, neighbor or family member go to your home to bring your puppy out at the designated times.

An adult Beagle will be able to hold its needs for up to 8 hours and sometimes a bit longer. A puppy is much different. The rule to follow is that a puppy can hold its elimination one hour per month of age. For example, a 2 month old pup can hold its needs for 2 hours, a 3 month old puppy can hold its needs for 3 hours and so on.

Once your Beagle is 8 months old, he or she should be able to hold their needs for close to 8 hours.

If you must leave your puppy by themselves, you will need to set up a system to keep them safe while you are gone & to offer a place to urinate or eliminate.

Crate, Gates or Roaming

Until your Beagle is 100% house trained, it is not recommended to allow your dog to roam the home freely. It is also not recommended to keep your dog or puppy in a crate for the day. Crates are a temporary, short-term method of confining your dog when needed; to keep a Beagle in a crate for 7, 8 hours during the day will negatively affect your dog's behavior and we consider it to be unethical.

Therefore, gating off an area of your home, where your Beagle will have all of the necessary needs, is the optimal solution.

You may set up gates in any room with a large piece of linoleum underneath or you may gate off a specific room, such as the kitchen by using baby gates. While you will be training your puppy to urinate and eliminate outside, there should be newspapers in this area if you will be gone for longer than the pup can hold its needs.

You should bring your Beagle outside right before and right after placing them inside of this gated area.

This area should include:

A dog bed, soft baby blanket or opened crate with a blanket inside for the dog to nap when needed.
A water dispenser - a bowl of water can easily be knocked over by a hyper puppy
Food - While we strongly suggest scheduled feedings and not free feeding, if you will be gone during "meal time", dog food must be left in this area. You may wish to obtain a dog food dispenser.
Toys - A toy is not a toy. To help your Beagle cope with Separation Anxiety, the best dog toys will be either

Interactive - These are toys that make noises, move or perform other actions when played with
Treat Toys - These are toys that hold hidden dog treats that you place inside. A Beagle can spend hours working to release the treat and this greatly helps to pass the time when you are not home

For teething puppies, you will want to have specific teething toys that actually help with their discomfort. These
toys will:

Have protrusions which the puppy can work into the areas of the mouth that has discomfort
Can be put into the freezer to make cold - a great help for a teething pup

A radio - playing softly in the background can help with canine Separation Anxiety
Newspaper - While it is best to train your Beagle 1 method of housebreaking, newspaper should be in a corner of this area. Any time that your puppy "misses the mark", you can clean up the area with paper towels and then place those paper towels onto the newspaper for a few moments to transfer the scent. This will help show your Beagle that the newspaper is the appropriate place to go to the bathroom while you are gone.

Saying Goodbye & Hello

The way in which you prepare to leave, say goodbye and say hello when arriving home will be very important to your Beagle's behavior and their ability to cope with being home alone. It will be your words, tone of voice & actions that shows your dog if leaving is okay...or something to be very nervous about.

Tip: Although it may be tremendously tempting to hug, kiss and give lots of attention to your Beagle right before you leave the house, it is best for both of you if you do not.

Note: Separation Anxiety is a very complex issue. Each Beagle is unique. To have all of the details on this behavior issue and many more, you may wish to see what is inside of the Beagle Pro Book, a very easy to download ebook., which comes with direct, personal advice with the Beagle Pro Experts...For FREE...For LIFE...Click here to learn more