There have been a lot of upsets and moves in our lives, and I think it is affecting poor Murray. He has separation anxiety. We have been in our home for one month. Although I don’t have to work a lot outside the home and he is not alone for long periods, I do have to leave him at times. When I go, he is crated and has his thunder shirt on, and I have easy listening music going. When I come back, he has licked his paws so much that they are soaking, and he whines and runs to find a stuffed toy. He takes a couple of minutes to settle down and follows me around the house for a few minutes.

During the sale of our house, we had all kinds of boxes all over the place, and this is when we first noticed Murray’s odd behavior, such as eating things off the counter (which he had never done before). There was five months between selling our house and moving in to our new home, so we moved in with friends. Murray had a bowel movement in their bedroom the first day. He had never done that before, so it was very weird, indeed. Their house has more activity than ours, as they have two large parrots as pets, but Murray was rarely left alone there because our friends’ son was at home all the time. On the two occasions when he was left alone, he jumped onto the counter and stole whatever was there, and he emptied two bathroom bins.

When we moved into our new house, he urinated in a downstairs hallway, but since then, he has not had any problems of that nature. Throughout the entire moving process, I constantly told him that we love him and he would be coming with us. I told him that we would never leave him behind.