Not necessarily. For separation anxiety, what’s more important is that you establish comfort with your absol during her waking hours. Leave her in a comfortable atmosphere with plenty of food, water, and toys, and always tell her when you’re coming back. Furthermore, stick to your schedule, including when you’re at home. If you feed her, walk her, and perform all the same tasks at the exact same time, you’ll train her to understand the concept of time itself, which will help her know when to expect you. Then, reinforce this concept by leaving at the exact same time every day and trying to come home, also at the exact same time.
In addition to this, never leave her sight without giving her that cue. When leaving a room, tell her where you’re going, and when you reenter a room, announce yourself. This will train her to understand cues as well. Reinforce this idea by feeding her a treat every time she takes your absence well.
Once you establish these ideas, be sure to announce when you leave for work shortly before walking out the door, and announce yourself when you come home. Give your absol a treat if you come home to find your home in order and your absol fairly relaxed. Eventually, through a combination of strict schedules, verbal cues, and positive reinforcement, your absol will get a sense for how long you’ll be gone and when to expect you, so it will be easier for her to understand that you are coming back. Once that happens, you should find that she’ll be more and more at ease while you’re gone. She may even find it easier to sleep at night once she no longer needs to be constantly reassured of your presence.
I’d like to answer all of these asks at once for the sake of saving time. Many of these asks have very similar responses: I don’t have enough context to know for certain why your pokémon are arguing or lashing out at teammates (or guests, in the case of the above mentioned sylveon).
You see, a pokémon is never aggressive for no reason, but that reason is entirely circumstantial and dependent on a wide variety of factors. So the first step is to observe your pokémon to determine a trigger. Sometimes, it’s jealousy—a pokémon becomes jealous of another or of a human you’ve chosen to spend more time on. Other times, it’s simple personality conflicts, a personal dislike of each other, competition for resources that are actually less abundant than you realize, or anxiety over a new person or pokémon.
In each case, it’s important to find out what the specific cause is by observing your pokémon carefully. Read its body language, see what it and its target are doing just before violence breaks out, and see if there’s anything in particular that seems to provoke your pokémon. Consider also simply communicating with your pokémon and asking them if they can tell you what the problem may be. Although pokémon can’t often literally speak to us, they’re highly intelligent and may be able to indicate what’s upsetting them with gestures, barks, or simply by showing you.
Once you determine the cause of the issue, it will be far easier to resolve it. If two pokémon are arguing, serve as an objective mediator by suggesting compromises. Couple this with increased double training off the battlefield (that is, train your pokémon together outside of battles and have them perform tasks as a team) to strengthen teamwork.
If a pokémon is aggressive towards another who isn’t reciprocating, be sure to introduce them slowly, rather than at once. Set up a comfortable environment and allow your pokémon (both the aggressive one and the target) to enter this space, first for a short period of time and then over increasingly long periods until your aggressive pokémon can tolerate being in the same room as the other. (You may wish to teach your pokémon to heel before this.) Yes, even if your pokémon has never displayed aggressive behavior towards other members of your team, it may be worth it to go through this process with it and its target anyway. Think of it like meeting a new person. You may not like everyone you meet, or you may have gotten a bad first impression. However, if you’re in a comfortable atmosphere and you’re asked to interact with that person, the more you do this, the easier it will be to tolerate them.
If a pokémon is aggressive towards a human, it’s important to pay attention to why, especially if your pokémon is psychic or an absol. (The one in the above asks is not, but even so, this doesn’t rule out the possibility that your pokémon is sending you a warning.) If your pokémon is acting out of fear for either you or your safety, promise them that you’ll take their warning into consideration but reassure them that they don’t have anything to fear, especially if you know your human company well enough to determine right away whether or not such fears would be unfounded. If, however, your pokémon seems to be jealous or seems to dislike a person on a personal level, teach your human guests the best ways to interact with your pokémon partners and have them do so (cautiously at first). Let your guests feed your pokémon treats and play with them as you would. Allow them to connect with your pokémon as friends. All the while, reassure your pokémon that you’re not replacing them with human contact.
In each case, the point is that aggression in pokémon sometimes happens, but it never happens for no reason. It’s up to you as a trainer to determine what that reason is and to take steps to alleviate it, depending on what the specific problem may be.
Well, aside from the usual go-to service pokémon that is togetic and togekiss, swablu and altaria are perhaps the most popular, due to their soothing feathers and equally soothing voices, coupled with their level of comfort and calmness around humans. Altaria especially are good choices, as not only can their wings double as stim toys (this doesn’t hurt them), but also, for those who suffer from anxiety and don’t mind physical contact, an altaria is rather effective in creating a sense of safety for their partners by enveloping them with its wings and humming a calming melody.
The only other pokémon often used for this purpose is jumpluff, whose cotton hands and slow, graceful movements through the air are often said to be rather calming in nature. However, it should be noted that as a pokémon that relies on spore-based techniques (and that stores such spores in its hands), jumpluff may not be effective for those who have allergies.
Beyond that, I admit that the selection for flying-types is rather limited, although anyone can train their pokémon to be companions if they have enough patience and time.
Not necessarily. For many pokémon that evolve by trading, trade evolution is only the faster of two options. Trade evolution pokémon may also evolve by themselves, just like many others do; the only thing is that the pokémon in question must be of considerable age and battle experience to do so.
However, it’s difficult to say with this particular gengar. Its timidity may indicate that it hasn’t seen humans in years (which means it’s old and has evolved on its own) or that it’s endured trauma (which may indicate that it’s been abandoned). On the other hand, the fact that it visits you may indicate that it’s curious, which seems to imply the former (that you’re the first human it’s interacted with in a very, very long time).
Regardless of the reason behind its behavior, it wouldn’t hurt to show that you mean this gengar no harm, but certainly be cautious. While I advocate making friends with any pokémon, a gengar’s curiosity may also indicate that it’s examining you for your potential as food. Consider investing in sage before attempting to befriend this gengar.
Do you have family or a close friend who may be able to take care of your absol now and then? Although this seems a little less than ideal (separating yourself from your partner, that is), think of it like allowing a close friend or family member to babysit a child for a day. So long as you instruct your absol to listen to her temporary caretaker and ensure that said caretaker knows how to handle your absol, letting her go on daytrips as often as possible may be enough to alleviate the restlessness that she feels.
If, however, you don’t have a trusted friend or family member, you may be able to find a trainer who specializes in “babysitting” pokémon. Alternatively, your only other option may be to reassure your absol that this change is only temporary and that when the baby is old enough, you will not only be able to resume your adventures, but you will also do it with a new companion (so long as the adventures in question aren’t dangerous for a small child).
If we’re talking about those with hypersensitivity issues, yes, indeed!
I touched upon how pokémon with psychic abilities may assist those with sensory issues in an earlier post (http://bills-pokedex.tumblr.com/post/162059972964/are-there-any-service-pokemon-youd-recommend-for), but to put it in short, the reason why psychic-types may be popular for this kind of work is because they’re capable of either teleporting their partners to a safe location, assisting with communication if their partners become overwhelmed, projecting calming auras or leading their partners in on-the-spot grounding exercises (as an immediate coping mechanism), and/or by either detecting or predicting oncoming situations that their partners may have difficulty navigating due to their sensory issues.
That having been said, though, while gardevoir isn’t necessarily the most popular choice for this work, it is fairly popular for hypersensitive people due to the empathic abilities of its evolutionary family. With these abilities, gardevoir (as well as ralts and kirlia) are capable of detecting the subtle shifts in their partner’s emotions, and thus, they can tell when their charges are overwhelmed, sometimes even before their charges themselves realize it.
For hyposensitive people, however, gardevoir’s empathic abilities are less effective because hyposensitivity is marked by a lack of reaction to a stimulus (and you can’t quite detect an emotional reaction that doesn’t exist), so you would be far better off with a pokémon that either has quick reflexes (such as medicham) or precognitive abilities (such as gothitelle). The reason here being that it becomes much more important to assist a hyposensitive person with literally navigating the world, rather than coping with overstimulation, and these pokémon can either predict obstacles or react rapidly to them to keep their partners out of immediate harm.
As with all instances of pokémon aggression, it’s impossible to answer definitively without knowing the full context. The best thing to do for the time being is to take into consideration the surrounding circumstances and work from there. Is this recent behavior, or did it start when either of your pokémon (or both) evolved? Does your lucario seem to lash out only when your lycanroc does something, or does he attack on sight? If the former, what are your pokémon doing just before your lucario attacks?
Once you figure out what might be triggering your lucario’s attacks, then you’ll be able to work out a solution by figuring out what it is, specifically, that your lucario wants.
Until then, it may be helpful to you to browse our team building tag (http://bills-pokedex.tumblr.com/tagged/team-building ), as many others have encountered situations in which their pokémon have become aggressive towards their own teammates. Perhaps one of their situations may shed some light on your own.
That depends on the breeder, anonymous. There are plenty of breeders who use ethical practices, including rehoming standard variation pokémon or placing them in low-kill shelters, rearing pokémon in safe environments, and strictly breeding pokémon from different familial stocks (sometimes pokémon sourced from entirely different countries) to minimize inbreeding. Others, however, use less scrupulous means, including inbreeding and overworking parent pokémon. This is why it’s vital to work with only League-certified shiny breeders—and even then, to do your own research into a breeder’s background before contacting them. (This could also be said of pokémon breeding in general, actually.)
In short, there are some who unfortunately don’t take into consideration the well being of their breeding pokémon or the resulting hatchlings, and although the Association does its best to shut down as many of these as we can, there are some who manage to slip past us. However, not all breeders are like this, and many go out of their way to ensure that both their breeding pokémon and their hatchlings are handled in a humane manner.
I would say this is an inadequate answer, but I’ve seen you—a 5′09″, I’m-not-even-sure-how-heavy man—fly on a two-foot, 33-pound farfetch’d, and I get the feeling you’re not actually being facetious here. It’s times like this that I question why I agreed to edit this blog. —LH
I mean, in all seriousness, we could very well discuss what are traditionally considered to be excellent modes of transportation, but would you really want me to write another dissertation on why I don’t understand how people can consider lapras, a being covered in a hard shell that in turn is covered in spikes, is generally considered to be the height of pokémon long-distance water transport? —Bill
The Pokédex According to Bill 