Yorkies and Separation Anxiety: 7 Essential Things Every Owner Should Know
Of all the small breeds prone to separation anxiety, Yorkies are near the top of the list. I’ve spoken with dozens of Yorkie owners over the years, and the story is almost always the same: the dog is perfect when someone is home, and completely falls apart when left alone. Howling, destructive behavior, bathroom accidents — from a dog that’s otherwise well-behaved.
Yorkies and separation anxiety is such a common combination that it’s worth understanding specifically — not just as a generic “dog anxiety” topic, but as something particular to this breed’s psychology and history.
Dogs with severe separation anxiety — those causing significant self-injury, escaping enclosures, or in extreme distress — should be seen by a veterinarian. Medication combined with behavior modification is significantly more effective for severe cases than behavior modification alone.
Why Yorkies and separation anxiety go together
Yorkies were bred as companion dogs with working terrier instincts. The combination creates dogs that are simultaneously intensely bonded to humans (companion trait) and tenacious in expressing distress (terrier trait). When a Yorkie is anxious about being alone, it doesn’t quietly fret — it commits to expressing that anxiety fully.
Contributing factors:
- Bond intensity: Yorkies form close, sometimes single-person attachments. The absence of their person is a genuinely significant event for them.
- Small size: Small dogs are physically dependent on their owners in ways larger breeds aren’t, which may reinforce the attachment.
- Owner behavior: Small dogs are frequently carried, held constantly, and rarely left alone from puppyhood — inadvertently creating dogs with no capacity to self-regulate when alone.
- Genetics: Some individual Yorkies and lines are more anxiety-prone than others.
7 things to know about Yorkies and separation anxiety
1. Prevention is dramatically easier than treatment
The easiest way to address Yorkies and separation anxiety is to prevent it from developing. For Yorkie puppies, this means:
- Regular, deliberate alone time from week one — brief periods of solitude that gradually extend
- Crate training early, making the crate a positive, self-selected retreat
- Not carrying the puppy everywhere and not responding to all vocalization
- Practicing short departures (step outside, come back in 2 minutes) from the first weeks
An adult Yorkie with established separation anxiety requires weeks of systematic intervention. A puppy with appropriate early training rarely develops it.
2. The behavior is driven by genuine distress — not spite
Yorkies with separation anxiety are not making a choice to destroy your cushions or howl all afternoon. They are in genuine emotional distress. Punishing behaviors that occur during the owner’s absence is ineffective and harmful — the dog cannot connect the punishment to the absence-triggered behavior, and the punishment adds stress to an already anxious dog.
3. Departure routines amplify anxiety
Pre-departure cues — picking up keys, putting on shoes, saying goodbye, making a fuss — teach the dog that these behaviors predict the stressful event. Dogs learn the cue sequence before the actual departure, and the anxiety begins during the pre-departure routine rather than at the door.
Desensitization of these cues is one of the most effective early interventions: pick up keys, sit back down. Put on shoes, watch TV. Coat on, check phone, coat off. Remove the predictive value from each cue gradually.
4. Dramatic arrivals and departures make things worse
How you leave and return has a significant impact. Long, emotionally charged goodbyes communicate that the departure is a significant (and potentially distressing) event. Excited, high-energy greetings on return reinforce that the owner’s absence was important.
Leave calmly and briefly. Return calmly and wait for the dog to settle before giving attention. This doesn’t mean ignoring your dog — it means calibrating the emotional weight of the event to something manageable.
5. Independence training is the core intervention
The systematic approach to treating Yorkies and separation anxiety involves building alone-time tolerance incrementally:
- Start with the owner in the same room but not giving attention
- Progress to the owner in another room briefly
- Progress to stepping outside the front door for 30 seconds, returning calmly
- Gradually extend duration: 1 minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, etc.
The rule: never extend duration before the dog is calm at the current level. If the dog shows distress at 10 minutes, drop back to 5 and build again. Progress that skips steps produces setbacks.
6. Tools that help Yorkies with separation anxiety
- Crate training: A covered crate — a “den” — provides a safe, enclosed space where many anxious dogs regulate better than in open rooms
- Adaptil (DAP) diffuser: Synthetic dog-appeasing pheromone; consistent evidence for reducing anxiety-related behaviors
- Food enrichment for alone time: Kong stuffed with high-value food, frozen overnight — gives the dog something positive to do during the departure
- Calming music: Through a Dog’s Ear has research support for reducing canine anxiety specifically
- Second dog: For some Yorkies, the presence of another dog reduces alone-time distress significantly; for others, anxiety is person-specific and a second dog doesn’t help
7. When to involve your veterinarian
Yorkies and separation anxiety at the severe end of the spectrum — the dog injures itself trying to escape, loses bladder/bowel control consistently when alone, can’t relax even for 5 minutes — warrant veterinary involvement. Medication (typically fluoxetine or trazodone, sometimes situational anxiolytics) doesn’t replace behavior modification but makes it far more effective by reducing the baseline anxiety level enough for learning to occur.
For more on Yorkie behavior and dog anxiety, see our guides on Yorkie behavior problems and how to help a dog with separation anxiety. The ASPCA’s separation anxiety resource is an excellent further reference.
Michael Burrows has owned dogs for over 15 years and writes about dog behavior from personal experience and research. For severe anxiety, consult a vet.
