Last weekend, we bumped Lilly’s clomipramine up to 40 mg twice a day. Her alprazolam stayed the same at .5 twice a day. While I wait for the OK to move onto the next stage of the behavior plan, which includes noises, I’m doing what I can to spice up the routine and challenge Lilly in mild ways. I’m starting with visual things since they generally cause less fear than noises. …
As the parsing of stimuli continues, I find myself also splitting out individual behaviors from their many partners for sanity’s sake. Take the hubbub at the door before going outside.
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Our baseline sit-stay relaxation work continues, as does the process of extinction on attention seeking behaviors. We had to up the ante on bugging me because just turning away from her wasn’t working. So, now, I leave the room and close the door for at least 20 seconds. It might be working. On Monday, she only bugged me 7 times between 9 am and 5 pm. That’s actually good, compared to 20+ most days last week. Otherwise, here are a few things to note: …
I wish I had some exciting news to report, but we’re mostly mired in the nitty-gritty foundation work of our new behavior modification plan. Not very sexy stuff, I’m afraid. But, here are a few observations and struggles. …
I worked hard this week to track Lilly’s behavior patterns so that we’ll have something concrete for comparison down the road when the new drugs and behavior work kick in. Here are a few things I found interesting: …
Lilly’s new behavior modification plan is 26 pages long. On Saturday, I read through the entire thing, and I went back through the initial stages in detail. Then, I emailed a bunch of additional information to our behaviorist, along with a slew of questions. Here is the basic outline of the plan.
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Lilly and I braved painful rush-hour traffic in ridiculous heat to drive 2+ hours (each way) to a consultation last night with a behaviorist at the Colorado State University’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital in Fort Collins, CO. The full written diagnosis, new drug and dosage selection, and detailed behavior modification plan is pending. And, I’m still obsessively processing (while madly cleaning my entire house) everything we talked about during our nearly 2 hour consult. BUT, here are a couple things I’m sorting through and trying to understand based on what I managed to …
Behind the scenes at Champion of My Heart, I get private advice from some readers. They simply feel more comfortable emailing me directly with ideas, input, support. And, that’s totally fine. One such idea from a friend was to take Lilly on different hikes this summer to keep her out and working, even though we’re taking a break from classes until we figure out the anxiety medicine stuff. So, here are a few updates on recent outings: …
It was another long, tough week around Lilly-Town. We nearly gave up and came home from class several times. Here’s how it went. …
This week’s class took place along a busy, outlying trail. Lots of pedestrians, bikes, other dogs. But, there’s good shade in many spots and a creek/ditch for swimming. Despite
set-backs recently, I went with an open mind. I was ready to click anything that resembled something I want. That meant weathering a couple odd moments. …
