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the pack dictates every move they make—when they eat, where they sleep, whom they play with, what they think—because the pack structure, fair or not, keeps individual wolves alive. Everything in a wolf pack, from raising pups to hunting food, requires cooperation. For example, when wolf pups are born, the job of the mom, the alpha female of the pack, consists of protecting and feeding the pups in the den, while the job of subordinate members includes bringing food to the mom in the den. When the pups grow old enough to leave the den, they’re “placed” in a rendezvous point by the older wolves who meet there periodically during the day to check on the pups or bring them food. By the time the pups are about six months old, they learn the pack’s hunting techniques, which in and of themselves involve cooperative tracking, signaling, and ambushing among all pack members. If one of the wolves is injured during the hunt, the others usually bring him food until he recovers.
    Over the millennia, we’ve managed to cull many of the physical characteristics of wolves from dogs—put a pug in front of a wolf and he’d probably eat it—but we’ve never bred out the pack mentality. It’s instinctive. It’s a need. And for a dog whose pack consists of humans, it’s a matter of survival. Dumping a pet dog in the park is like expelling a wolf from the pack; unless she finds a new pack, she will probably die a lonely death in a relatively short period of time, and will do anything, submit to anything, to belong once again.
    In Phoebe’s case, as with any dog abandoned—or in their minds “expelled”—from the pack, the experience is so frightening that even if they find the safety of a new family, they suffer a sort of post-traumatic stress. Dogs like this are so afraid of rejection that they often hyper-attach to their new pack members. As a result, every time they’re left alone, they experience abandonment all over again. Terror grips them. Hoping they’re only temporarily lost, they howl so the pack can find them again. When that doesn’t work, they claw at doors to get out, so they can go and find the pack themselves. When that doesn’t work, they become so afraid that they lose control of their bowels and tear blindly at anything holding the pack’s scent, including pillows, shoes, and blankets.
    Whatever you do, DON’T PUNISH THE DOG when you get home. Her behavior isn’t so much destructive as it is desperate, because she feared you abandoned her. Remember always that a dog has about as much chance of surviving all alone as a four-year-old kid. In his book, The Ecology of Stray Dogs , Alan Beck noted that the average life span of a family dog is 10.5 years, while the average life span of a stray dog is 2.3 years. I’ve not kept records, but in all of the years I’ve spent tracking feral dogs (those born wild on the streets), I’ve never seen one with arthritis. So when you walk in the door and find your shoes with teeth marks, your coffee table books ripped to shreds, and the legs of your sofa splintered like fireplace kindling, DON’T PUNISH THE DOG. I can’t stress this enough. DO NOT PUNISH THE DOG.
    Since the cause of separation anxiety is fear, the cure is security. The problem is that you can’t just lavish your dog with love, hugs, and diamond-studded designer water bowls, hoping she’ll equate this with security. She won’t. She’s addicted to you and will always need more.
    Now, I’m no fan of anything that doesn’t bring instant gratification—if a meal doesn’t meet my three-step rule in which step one reads “peel back lid and place in microwave,” and step three says “enjoy,” I don’t buy it—so let’s make this easy on ourselves and think of the cure for separation anxiety as a simple one-step process, which is: FOLLOW DIRECTIONS THAT FOLLOW.
    (This exercise may seem a little silly at first, but remember—you can’t convince your dog verbally that you’ll be back. You