OK, this one is very hard for me to write about. I have been avoiding this article for years because I am not a politician nor I want to be and I particularly don't care if I hurt someone's feelings. I am not in a business of collecting votes or making sure I please everyone, I am in a business of training animals and helping people to communicate with them. Truth is that if you are thinking your dog has "separation anxiety", well you will not like much what I have to say, but I hope you can see past that and make the necessary changes to fix your problem. Everyone makes mistakes and that is fine, it is how we go about fixing them. I believe very strongly that all chemical medication is unbelievably cruel and I don't even know where to begin thinking about how we got the right to administer such things to our animals. Perhaps we have some god syndrome as humanity and we think that we can do whatever we feel like to our animals, but I would never do such thing and never would I respect it. Now IMO it is completely fine to physically correct a dog if you are about to get bitten or if the situation calls for it and make sure you teach him that this is not acceptable, but I also think it is completely not fine to be so incompetent in training as a dog owner that you have to get him medicated in order to coexist together. Yet this is commonly accepted by our society and correcting a dog is not. I have dealt with hundreds of dogs and I helped to "fix" many and never needed the help of anti depressants. Separation anxiety is completely and without a discussion human caused behaviour (perhaps there is 1 : 100 000 where it is a medical issue, it is not your case). Medication should never be used as a short cut to your training shortcomings. Alright, I had to make this point in order to move foreword. If you do not agree with the above, stop reading right here because you are not ready to fix your problem yet and you will waste your time.
Separation anxiety is actually a very simple behavioural problem that can be fixed in 1 day in capable hands, yes you heard right, one day. Most of you will not be able to do it in a day and that is OK, it is not a race, important is that it can be undone very quickly with the right approach. S.A. simply started with the owner spoiling his new puppy in most cases. What has happened precisely was that the owner started, baby step at a time, rewarding the negative behaviour, most commonly without knowing it and most commonly with good intentions. This singularly is the biggest training mistake for dogs and horses alike (make your own judgement about children). People simply don't want to acknowledge the fact that they are responsible for their mistakes and they would often rather blame it on something or someone else, it is easier that way and our ego doesn't get hurt. See this whole S.A. issue is not really a training problem, it doesn't include specific mechanical tasks as sit or down and even complex chain of commands but it is an outlook and general way in which we treat our dog and the rules and respect we expect and give. This comes very naturally for me but I also understand that it can be very hard to grasp for some people. That is OK and it is to be expected, we all grew up differently, some of us were in the military or had to finish complex schooling where we had to follow many sets of rules and some of us had to go thru life differently and living with rules is not so "normal" for them. The thing is, your dogs love rules and they require them. As a matter of fact, if they do not have set of rules to follow they are not happy, they do not feel safe, they have a hard time truly relaxing and they do not know where they belong in a sense of a pack rank in your family. All the above contribute to having anxiety and living nervous. This becomes a vicious circle and often people resort to pampering the dog instead of ordering/guiding him on what to do. We often add firewood in the fire by "calming down" a dog that already shows signs of anxiety and therefore we reward the unwanted behaviour, making it worse and worse every time. What we need to do is completely ignore it and/or correct it if we know how. Never talk calmly to your dog if he is shaking, cowarding, acting up in a crate, hiding, being destructive and out of control, those are all behaviours we must correct as a pack leader, not to reinforce. Actually, it is besides feeding the sole most important thing to do as an owner. You took on the responsibility by buying a dog so you must live up to being the leader. I purposely am not using terms as "adopt" vs buy and "guardian" vs owner. I am tired of political correctness and stupidity. You bought a dog, you are the owner and you are responsible for its mental and physical state. Any gadgets as "thunder shirts, scented oils, esoteric music etc", pls come one, I think you already get the drifts. If you still believe this is the solution to the problem, then again, you are not ready to fix what you created, you just want to feel better about your self by spending money so you can say "I tried".
There is also another thing that is important to add here and that is exercise. Most dogs are overfed and under exercised. To put it in perspective, my dogs, for example, run pulling me on my bicycle (bikejoring, you can see my videos) 15-20km 2 or 3 times a week, plus they have a free run of our farm, plus they run with me beside my horse or a quad. Walking your GSP or a Drahthaar on a leash around the block is not sufficient exercise and his energy has to go somewhere, esp if you feed premium dog food meant for dog athletes.
So to sum it up, set up rules, reinforce them, kennel train your dog and exercise him as much as you can, both physically and mentally.