Separation Anxiety

[wildyamms]

I'm new here, but I have a 6 month old pup who is extremely attached to me. When we first rescued him, he wanted absolutely nothing to do with anybody else he met. He was never aggressive or shy toward others, just followed me like my own shadow. Because we noticed that early on, over the past few months my fiance and I have been working with him to nip this in the bud. We've tried everything, and I mean everything. He has improved immensely with time, but still shows signs of anxiety when I'm not around. He hasn't latched on to my fiance yet, but Dennis did mention that, when I was in California for two weeks, Zeppelin displayed the same anxieties when he left him home for short periods of time (we have a camera set up to make sure he doesn't injure himself in the crate); he was never crated for more than 3 hours at a time, and he was home with my fiance's 2 other male dogs (a 10 year old black lab male, and a 2 year old black lab/border collie male), and occasionally our nephew puppy (6 month old english bulldog/beagle male).

At my house, I have 2 dogs also (a 10 year old retriever/chow male, and a 10 year old pitbull/GSD female), so even when we leave the house, he is never alone. And yes, we realized that only crating him would probably promote anxiousness and the need to escape and be with the pack, so we dusted off the older dogs' crates and have them set up along side his (all 5 of them), so they are all crated when we leave. The older dogs are all crate trained and very well-behaved--we can leave the bedding in their crate, but not Zeppelin's because of his destructiveness. Both my fiance and I have yards that are large and completely fenced in, and all the dogs are let out for at least 45 minutes of play time in the backyard before we leave the house. They are also walked twice daily (an hour per walk), and are allowed to play in the house.

I don't make a big deal of leaving him (no long goodbyes or expression of emotions), I grab my keys and open the garage randomly during the day so he doesn't associate the sounds with me leaving, I don't favor him more than the other dogs, etc. And in times when I don't leave the house, if I simply leave the room to use the bathroom, for example, he waits patiently outside the door. He does this every time I leave a door shut, even if I leave the dogs outside and shut the porch door (he stays at the door while the other dogs chase each other and have a good time). Like I said before, we've tried everything that we could think of, and everything that we thought was appropriate that we researched. He used to try and bit the wood frame around the doors, and scratch them, but our work with him has halted at waiting patiently for me to come back. Not even food will coerce him away (and he is very food motivated). Any suggestions? Please and thanks!

Btw, this is our first Dutch (we didn't know what he was because we rescued him from a kill shelter), so we have no experience with their breed. But between the two of us, we've raised and had no problems training German Shepherds, Rottweilers, Dobermans, and Pitbulls (not that I am trying to compare the breeds, just pointing out that we have experience with high energy/working dogs).