As of 13 August 2026, AI can help your dog stay home alone.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, no skill needed, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open a notes document and record your dog's age, history, routine, health and exercise, current comfortable time alone, home setup, and every behaviour you observe before, during and after departures.
   2. Use a camera or another safe observation method during a short absence and record the point at which your dog first shows calm or distressed behaviour, without extending the absence to test their limit.
   3. Paste those observations into the prompt, including your required schedule and any housing, noise or safety constraints.
   4. Paste the generated plan into your notes and remove any step that assumes facts the model did not receive or recommends leaving the dog distressed.
   5. Start with the first exercise at or below the dog's observed comfortable limit, and record the duration, behaviour and recovery in the daily log.
   6. Compare each proposed progression with your dog's actual recordings, repeating or stepping back when behaviour worsens rather than advancing because the calendar says to.
   7. Contact your vet or a qualified clinical animal behaviourist if your dog shows persistent distress, escape attempts, injury risk, or cannot progress without becoming distressed.

   Prompt

   Create a gradual, welfare-led plan to help my dog become comfortable staying home alone. Use only the information I provide and do not diagnose the dog or invent facts. If the information is insufficient, ask focused questions before making the plan.
   
   Dog details:
   - Age and breed or mix: [insert]
   - How long the dog has lived with me: [insert]
   - Relevant history, including rehoming, changes or previous experiences alone: [insert]
   - Health, toileting and exercise routine: [insert]
   - Typical daily schedule: [insert]
   - Current longest comfortable time alone: [insert]
   - What happens when I prepare to leave: [insert]
   - What happens after I leave, based on observation or recordings: [insert]
   - What happens when I return: [insert]
   - Home setup, including where the dog stays and access to food, water and toileting: [insert]
   - Any neighbours, noise, safety or housing constraints: [insert]
   - My required schedule and the time available for training: [insert]
   
   Give me:
   1. The main training objective, stated without diagnosing the cause.
   2. A starting exercise based on the dog's current comfortable limit, never pushing through barking, frantic behaviour, escape attempts, destructive behaviour, toileting accidents or other signs of distress.
   3. A staged plan with clear criteria for repeating, progressing, pausing or stepping back. Use placeholders or ranges where the dog's response must determine the next step rather than pretending there is a universal timetable.
   4. A practical departure and return routine, enrichment and safety checks that do not depend on leaving the dog distressed.
   5. A simple daily log recording exercise, duration, behaviour and recovery.
   6. What I should observe using a camera or other safe method, and what would mean I should stop and contact a vet or a qualified clinical animal behaviourist.
   7. A short list of reputable UK welfare guidance to check. Do not recommend punishment, flooding, or deliberately leaving the dog to panic.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.