Preventing separation anxiety and submissive urination

Whenever we would leave the house and arrive back home, we quickly learned that Kushi would dribble pee when we greeted her. Supposedly, this is a submissive behavior. To stop this, we would avoid saying goodbye to her whenever we would leave the house, and when we came back, we would ignore her for a few minutes, calmly going about our business. We would then calmly take her out to go pee, and only then would we greet her. This worked, and Kushi no longer dribbles pee.

She also hated when we left her alone. She would pick up one of her toys and carry it around in her mouth as she paces around, whining and whimpering EXTREMELY LOUDLY. Her whining would get so loud she would start an ear-piercing yipping and keening.


What we did to deal with this was to practice getting her used to being by herself. We would leave her alone for short periods (ie just leaving the room, or going out on an errand), coming and going abruptly. We would not say goodbye or hello to her. We If she whimpered, we would completely ignore her. We did this repeatedly, until Kushi got used to being alone without worrying we were going to forever abandon her every time we left her. Gradually, she stopped whimpering.

In general, Kushi is a pretty submissive dog. She'll roll over and show her belly at the drop of a hat, and she's always licking us nonstop, both submissive behaviors. We do our best to build up her self-confidence, constantly letting her explore new situations but not giving her any reassurance whenever she gets scared and tries to jump up on us. Picking her up, petting and reassuring her supposedly only validates her fears, and by not doing so, we let her learn how to deal with the situation and gain confidence with the experience.