I would go upstairs and at the first scratching of the puppy, I would go back down again, open the kitchen door, cuddle the puppy ("Oh no!" the old fashioned dog trainers and nursery nurses began to shout, "you’re making a rod for your own back! The puppy will grow up a monster!!!"), put it back in it’s bed and tell it with full eye contact and meaning, "Now then, little one, all is well. I’m upstairs and if you need me for anything, just call me and I will come. Good night now. I love you."
Then I would turn off the light, close the door and sit at the bottom of the step until the scratching and first little whimper would start up again, and I’d repeat the self same thing. With this particular puppy, a very sensitive 8 week old poodle cross God-alone-knows what, it took 8 repetitions and a total of 1 hour 12 minutes for silence to reign and for me to go to bed. It called me twice more that night, and once or twice a night for another 3 days. After that, it did not call me any more apart from one occasion about a week later and when I went to see it, it was distressed and a little while later, threw up something that looked like an old fish skeleton.
I wrote down my findings in a note book and mused for some considerable time on the last puppy in my house, that had howled for hours on end and finally got to sleep in my bed in the end anyway simply because the neighbours sent the police round repeatedly. Realising of course that one puppy doesn’t make a paradigm shift, I then went back to my referring trainers and assistants, told them the whole story and asked them to try it out.
They listened with both eyebrows raised but luckily enough, I had an excellent reputation and track record for being sensible and practical in all my dealings and innovations, so they gave me the benefit of the doubt and a rather half hearted, "Ahm, ok Silvia ... we’ll try it ..."
One of these, a very conservative lady, had taken receipt of a rescued GSD bitch that very afternoon and in the night, grew fearful that the bitch would break through the glass kitchen door and injure herself severely, as she was throwing herself against it senselessly in absolute panic of separation.
As the lady, who happened to be a highly qualified and supremely experienced dog obedience instructor and trainer’s trainer, didn’t know what else she could do (and sleeping with the dog in the bedroom was not an option on account of her husband and his views on the topic), she half heartedly tried "Silvia’s new fangled theory".
She went back into the kitchen and told the dog that she needed to sleep and that she was just upstairs, feeling very foolish by her own admission for doing so. Guess what. The GSD bitch calmed right down and called the lady three more times before in that household too, peace and silence reigned that lasted until 7am the next morning when the bitch began to bark to be let out into the garden. The rescued bitch never called again after that – not once and to this very day in 2001.
From mad separation anxiety to total peace in one single night. The good people who tried out the Harmony Programme on their cats, dogs, horses, husbands and in their boarding kennels, rescue kennels, wildlife parks, you name it, were absolutely astonished how easy it was to calm a creature in this way and how it did the exact opposite of what we all had believed it would do – instead of a needy monster that would haunt you all your living, breathing hours, what we were creating were balanced, satisfied individuals that seemed to find a sense of confidence in their environments, in us, and most importantly, within themselves.
Before we go on to Harmony Programme exercises, I would like to tell you why I am taking my time in this assignment to tell you all of this. The Harmony Programme is not something that we can use as healers from the outside to make "everything all right" in behaviour problems that are rooted in attention seeking. It is something that the caretakers need to be told about and need to at least try, no matter how half heartedly, to get an understanding of the benefits for everyone involved.
The "need for attention energy" is a daily one, and it is important that the owners make changes in their interactions with the animal in question to supply at least a baseline of positive attention energy and begin to find ways of backing away from negative attention energy exchanges.
