In terms of separation anxiety, desensitization exercises can be helpful. I did that with Shiba Sephy when he was young, and he is now pretty good being home alone. Sephy also really likes a fixed routine and consistent rules. He is less stressed when he knows what to expect from everyone in the family – in terms of both schedule and behavior.
http://shibashake.com/dog/separation-anxiety-dog-why-how-reduce-dog-stress#desensitize

In terms of potty training, what has helped with my dogs is not only to ‘correct’ mistakes, but also to reward them really well for doing their business outside. As soon as they are done with potty outside, I mark the behavior (Good) and reward them with attention, food, and a fun game. Here is more on puppy potty training.

In terms of playing, I always supervise play sessions and have many play breaks. This keeps everyone from getting over-excited. I do not allow any kind of bullying. I also do group obedience training sessions, so that they learn it is most rewarding when they are calm and working together. Here is more on what I do to introduce a new dog.

Hugs to your dogs and congratulations on your new Shiba puppy!

How does he react when he is led away by a leash before the person leaves?

the dog can sense at leat 10-15 minutes before I leave

Yeah, dogs are extremely observant and they know all the little things we do when we get ready to leave. Desensitization exercises can be helpful in these situations.
http://shibashake.com/dog/separation-anxiety-dog-why-how-reduce-dog-stress#desensitize

A variation on people desensitization exercises can also help get a dog accustomed to people coming and leaving. The key is to only expose the dog to a little of the stimulus at a time, so that he can remain calm for the duration. At the same time, we engage the dog in doing something else together with us, so that he focuses on us, instead of on the stressful external stimulus.

In the meantime, we want to set our dog up for success and carefully manage him so that he does not get exposed to stressful situations that will trigger his reactive behavior. The more a dog practices a behavior, the more it will become a habit.

This behavior has developed over the last year, but it’s getting worse. Please help.

Thanks

There are many reasons why dogs dig. My Sibes love to dig to hunt for mice and other earth critters. My puppy once dug and chased a mouse all the way to my neighbor’s yard. Now I place concrete blocks on my fence line so that she cannot dig over there.

Some things that can help with fence digging-
1. I let my dog’s dig in a large area at the back of my yard. Then I train them as to where it is ok to dig, and where it is not ok. In this way, they can still engage in fun digging, but not cause any damage.
2. Exercise helps a lot. The time my puppy dug over to my neighbor’s yard, was during vet-visit day and I only took her for a shorter daily walk. Now I make sure to take her for longer walks every day (1-2 hours).
3. I also take my dogs to the hill trails around my neighborhood, where there are many interesting smells and they can also dig for mice and such.

I must say your blog has helped me so much with the growth of my pup Lobo, from when Lobo was going through his puppy biting phases (around last October) and still find myself going to your blogs. thanks again!!

My Shiba Inu had a similar experience with daycare. In his case, he really likes his routine, and does not like sleeping in strange places, especially when we are not there. The other thing about daycare that did not suit Sephy is that he really likes energetic wrestling and high speed chase games, which most daycare places do not allow (for good reason).

An alternative to daycare that I tried is hiring a dog walker. She takes out a group of around 5 dogs to walk off-leash at a nearby park. Shiba Sephy does not have good recall, but he really loves other dogs, so that was how the dog walker got him to come back. I would not do off-leash walking with my Sibes because they have much higher prey drive and there is a greater chance that they would bolt after deer. However, most dog walkers also offer on-leash walking services.

The nice thing about group walking is that Shiba gets to play with other dogs, gets to go to the park, and after that he comes home to the house pretty tired out. The weakness with hiring a dog walker is that most of them use aversive techniques, which was the key reason we stopped this activity. Also, there are a wide range of dog walkers with different levels of skill. I made sure to get one with a lot of experience, supervised the dogs well, and who is insured. We met the dog walker at our house first, evaluated how she interacted with Sephy, and we also followed her on a couple of her walks.

In terms of all day daycare, I am not sure how that would go for a puppy. Puppies are not very good at monitoring their own activity level, and may just play, play, play and forget to rest.

I did visit one all-day play daycare when I was looking for places for Sephy. They told me that they supervise the dogs closely so that the dogs that were resting, did not get bothered by the other dogs. They also only accepted more calm or submissive dogs. In essence, they want to make sure that when a dog who does not want to play makes his/her wishes known, the other dog will back away. Sephy was not a good candidate.

Another possibility is to get a pet sitter to come over to the house.

However, today, we got a call a few hours later from the daycare stating that he is showing separation anxiety, but that he was playing well with all the dogs in the daycare when its play time. They suggested sedatives when he goes into kennels (which we do not want to do, seeing that he has never showed this problem at home alone). We then get a call again stating that we should pick him up because he starting howling and showing signs of anxiety, and they were afraid he might hurt himself. Now, I was becoming worried and upset because as professionals they should know how to handle situations like this especially if its his first day. Also, we specifically chose this daycare bc they featured all day play with a few rest breaks. Knowing that he loves to play with dogs, as long as his breaks (basically putting him in his kennel) wont go over an hour, he would be ok. However, it seemed as if they kept the dogs longer than that. Well in the end of the day, he showed separation anxiety. I would love for him to not have this at any daycare facility, but how do i fix this if he is absolutely fine at home? Should we just find daycare with all day play and no kennel boarding? the only reason we placed him in the daycare center is so he would have company, being that we would be away for more than 5 hours? any suggestions!?

thank you in advance!