The Scary Kitchen Window
When we last spoke about The Scary Kitchen Window over the sink, the one that has the nerve to slide side to side when the others go up and down, I had resigned myself to never opening this window again in Lilly’s lifetime — another 10 years, give or take. Even as our customized Relaxation Protocol work continued for weeks in 2008, I’d given up on using the window as trigger/stimuli examples because it broke my heart to see Lilly flip out. Essentially, I stopped paying attention to the window at all, and so did she for going on nearly a year.
Our behaviorist increased Lilly’s twice daily dose of alprazolam from .5 mg to .75 mg when she learned at our last meeting that Lilly continued to have several noise-related fear issues. Of Lilly’s two behavior medications, this one specifically targets noise reactivity and sudden fear episodes.
Rather than return to the Relaxation Protocol set-up, however, I simply started opening the window over the sink while Lilly was eating her dinner in the kitchen. It seemed to me that using the window as a trigger had somehow poisoned the more formal training situation, which I began to believe meant we’d never overcome the window that way.
Remember, for Lilly, evening is often much scarier than daytime. I wish we knew why, but we don’t. So, after early success opening the window during meals in the morning, I switched to dinnertime with some success.
We’re not quite ready to declare victory, but the worst fear behavior I’m seeing is this: Lilly stops eating. She looks at me and the window, then resumes eating.
I’ve tried opening the window during non-meal times, and in those cases, the worst that happens is that Lilly retreats a few steps before responding to my offer of a snack with caution. Typically, I ask her to take at least a few steps toward me and the open window to earn her food.
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Summer Winds
The benefits of having access to this window include a nice evening breeze. I doubt I’ll do justice to my nature descriptions the way KB does, but here is my best attempt at explaining the winds around here.
Most of the time during the day, during the summer, any winds we get come from the West (downslope). BUT, in the evening, when the hot air down in the city gets enough height and oomph, it spills over the mountains from East to West (upslope). The result? We have nice breezes coming from the East at night.
The fastest way to cool off our house in the summer is to open a couple windows on the East side of the house as well as a couple others elsewhere, and voila! we have a comfy house with a pleasant breeze.
Weather geeks can read more here from a local meteorologist about what different winds mean around here for moisture, etc. Since we’re on the East side of the Continental Divide, what he says about Denver-area weather applies somewhat to our situation.
These breezy summer days are quickly coming to an end, though. And, come winter, the winds most often howl from the North and West. When we get big storms, they do indeed come from the East (as an upslope storm).