In my practice, I often get two related questions: Is my dog lonely by himself? Should I get another dog to keep him company? Unfortunately, there are no clear-cut answers to these questions.
Let’s take these questions one at a time. First, is my dog lonely by himself? People who ask this question sometimes also ask, can my dog feel loneliness, or is loneliness an emotion that is exclusively found in humans? As I discuss in a previous post, the evidence is piling up that dogs, and at least some other animals, have a range of emotions that is similar to the emotions felt by people. So the answer to whether the dog can feel loneliness seems to be yes.
However, the question of whether the dog is lonely by himself, without another dog for company, depends on several factors. One important factor is how well the dog is integrated into the human family. If the dog is given lots of attention, played with, walked frequently, talked to, fed at appropriate intervals, and given the run of the house, the chances are great that the dog is not going to feel lonely. On the other hand, if the dog is ignored by everyone, never played with, and relegated to a garage or a back yard for days on end, the chances are very high that the dog is going to feel lonely. In my experience, dogs thrive when they are allowed to live in the same surroundings as their human family, even if no humans are around for part of the day.
If the dog has been brought up from the time he was a puppy to share a house or an apartment with his humans who are coming and going on a variety of schedules and interact frequently with him, he will usually be fine left alone in the house or apartment by himself for long periods of time, as long as care is taken to prevent the development of separation anxiety. A cautionary note, however, is that a dog who has been kept in a garage or back yard for most of his life and given little attention should not be brought into the house and left alone without first assessing and monitoring the dog’s behavior inside the house. Under these circumstances, if left alone, the dog might feel trapped in unfamiliar surroundings and do a considerable amount of damage in trying to escape.
The second question is, should I get another dog to keep him company? Some of the most heartbreaking consultations that I have done involved people who got a second dog so that their first dog wouldn’t feel lonely. In an earlier post, Karen London discussed how littermates should not be adopted because of the possibility of aggression developing between the dogs. That possibility also exists, but not as frequently, when a new and unrelated dog is brought into the household. Typically, at first everything is fine, and the dogs seem pleased to be able to play with each other. But over time, issues of status can develop, with the dogs competing for attention and priority of access to food and other resources. Then people are sometimes faced with the problem that they cannot leave both dogs together without the possibility of a fight, and so the two dogs are relegated to separate rooms while no one is home.
But ultimately, the answer to the second question rests with the personalities of the dogs in question. If they are both mellow and do not seek higher status, things could work out fine. Similarly, if one dog seeks status while the other does not, problems usually do not develop. Sometimes, getting a dog of opposite gender can help defuse potential problems.
Bringing another dog home because you think that your dog is lonely is always something of a gamble. It could be that the new dog brightens up your dog’s life and they become fast friends. Alternatively, the new dog could become your dog’s worst nightmare, and you can find yourself regretting the day that you decided to bring home another dog.
---Con Slobodchikoff
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