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: …
To help mitigate Lilly’s recent upswing in fears, especially at home, our working theory is that they are based more on her noise sensitivities than first thought. So, enter alprazolam (Xanax), a benzodiazepine. She’ll take .5 mg twice a day. On Friday, our vet called in 6 weeks worth of medicine. It cost me about $26 at our local Walgreens. Once again the whole thing was unusual enough that the pharmacist’s eyes were as big as saucers.
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I wish I had some exciting news to report, but we’re mostly mired in the nitty-gritty foundation work of our new behavior modification plan. Not very sexy stuff, I’m afraid. But, here are a few observations and struggles. …
Someday, I’ll add up everything I’ve spent (which is A LOT) trying to help Lilly’s canine generalized anxiety and somewhat severe social phobia of people and dogs. For now, however, here’s a recap of very recent spending: …
After last week’s drama, I’m happy to report that Lilly’s new medicine (clomipramine), the one the animal behaviorist recommended, arrived Friday (7/18) from 1-800-PetMeds, just 2 days after the order was shipped. It took a full week and something like 20 phone calls to make it happen, though. Seriously, it took less time to get the meds here from a warehouse in Florida, than it did for someone to OK the order by phone. All manner of things fouled us up — a lack of responsiveness from my regular veterinary practice, an …
I worked hard this week to track Lilly’s behavior patterns so that we’ll have something concrete for comparison down the road when the new drugs and behavior work kick in. Here are a few things I found interesting: …
It’s not like clomipramine comes from Mars or is some new-fangled drug. It isn’t. It’s a pretty common medication for dogs with anxiety. Why, then, is it so @#$@# hard to get it where I live? And, why is the dog version SO MUCH MORE expensive than the human version? Talk about screwing the pooch, or at least the girl who loves her!!! …
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: …
