Working from home sounds like a gift to a dog, and for the household it often is, but a dog who spent years alone in a quiet house had a settled profession of her own: sleeping deeply, patrolling lightly, and conserving all social energy for your return. A full-time owner in the next chair rewrites that job description overnight. She may shadow you, demand interaction during calls, bark at deliveries she used to sleep through, or simply rest less and worse. The fix is not more attention spread thinly across the day; it is a legible structure that tells her when you are available and when the old quiet rules still apply.
Work Signals, Break Signals, and the Settle Spot
Give her a settle spot near your work but not on it: a bed beside the desk where she can see you, receive occasional calm acknowledgement, and learn that proximity does not mean participation. Reward settling there during real work, in the first weeks especially, and keep the boundary consistent, because a lap that is available on quiet mornings and forbidden during calls teaches her to test the boundary constantly. Pair the start of work with a small ritual she can read, laptop open, headphones on, a chew delivered to the bed, so the signals stack up in the same order each day.
Make breaks unmistakably different. When you stand up for her midday walk or garden game, use her name, invite her properly, and give that time fully; the contrast between ignored-while-working and welcomed-while-on-break is what makes both halves understandable. Keep total exercise and feeding anchored to the pre-change times as closely as your job allows, since her body clock was set by the old routine and will not consult your meeting schedule. If concentration work makes you irritable at interruptions, manage the environment, a door she can be settled behind with a chew during a crucial call, rather than rehearsing frustration at her daily.
Doorbell, Meetings, and the New Noises
A dog who never heard the doorbell answered now hears it answered daily, with your voice, movement, and sometimes a stranger at the door attached. Expect renewed excitement or barking and treat it as new training, not regression: practise a knock-and-settle routine outside meeting hours, reward the bed during deliveries where you can, and use a gate or closed door for parcels that need signatures and conversation. During video calls, a settled dog in the room is a reasonable goal; a dog who barks at voices from speakers may need the settle spot moved to the next room with a door between, at least until speaker voices become boring.
Protect her rest deliberately. Deep daytime sleep was a feature of her old life, and a dog lightly dozing all day beside a moving, talking owner can end the day overtired and fractious. If she cannot settle near the desk, try her original sleeping place with a gate between you; many dogs relax once following you stops being an available job.
Keep Her Solo Skills Alive
The hidden risk of home working is a dog who loses the ability to be left at all, discovered months later when you travel for work or return to an office some days. Practise separations daily from the first week: leave the house for short, ordinary absences, close internal doors for parts of the day, and keep departures and returns dull. Build duration gradually and vary it, so she learns that alone time is a normal texture of the day rather than a warning sign.
Anyone else who covers walks or breaks, a partner, a neighbour, a walker on your longest meeting days, should run the same work signals and settle rules, or she will learn that the structure applies to one person only. Recording who takes the midday walk and when it happened prevents both missed and doubled exercise, and KinsLe provides Care Teams for that coordination, letting each helper claim a walk or break duty and timestamp its completion where the whole household can see it.