Poor Bailey…
Since my last blog Bailey has been through the mill a bit.
We had to have plumbers in the house for a few days last week and this disturbed Bailey greatly. We dealt with it the best way we could, making sure that she could always see us but trying to keep our behaviour as ‘normal’ as possible while chaos ensued all around us.
The day after the plumbers left, there was an incident in the evening where we think Bailey accidently nudged or sat on Sticky while he was sleeping in the living room. It was fairly dark in the room as I was working in the office next door so I can only assume that Bailey didn’t see him and he snapped at her. For the next day or two after that Bailey found it impossible to rest. She was continually anxious and couldn’t sleep properly anywhere. She displayed extreme Hypervigilance (a known condition where dogs are so stressed that they are examining everything and looking everywhere) and was obviously very distressed. I determined that this was probably due to the combination of the upheaval of the past few days and then when Sticky snapped at her, she probably didn’t even realise it was him and her anxiety had generalised to the point where she couldn’t relax at all. Anywhere.
I decided to supplement her diet with an amino acid which helps to increase production of a certain neurotransmitter in the brain that induces a more relaxed state. Within 12 hours of beginning this, she had her first deep sleep for days. This could have been simple exhaustion taking over or the dietary assistance, but when she found the supplement in her food one morning and I found it spat out on the floor, I noticed that she didn’t rest much that day.
Unfortunately for Bailey, just as she was beginning to show signs of relaxing in her home again, the supervisor called today to ‘inspect the work’ (which incidentally hasn’t been undertaken properly and the plumbers need to return at some point). I observed quite an extreme reaction of stress; panting, shivering, extreme fur shedding, paw and ear sweating. This time as our visitor was wandering all over the house instead of sitting in the same room and reading or watching TV in an effort to ‘appear normal’, I tried a different approach…
I decided to act as Bailey’s ‘Guardian’ and stood at the doorway of the living room where she spends most of her time. I made it very clear to Bailey by ‘blocking’ the doorway with my arms and legs that nobody was going to be getting in past me. I didn’t move from this spot for the entire 40 minutes that the visitor was in the home and only allowed him past for a few seconds when he had to examine the radiator in the living room and even then put myself between him and Bailey calmly.
Within 10 minutes of me standing in the doorway, she lay down on her bed and relaxed a little. This was a much better state for her than standing very stiffly in the middle of the living room panting. She was still a little stressed but it was obvious to me that by taking obvious and clear action to ‘protect’ her space, she felt able to relax a little more than before, when we were simply behaving as normal. I realised that, for Bailey at least, behaving normally when we have strangers in the house is not the right thing to do; she needs us to step up and convince her that she is safe by NOT reacting as if nothing is happening. We need to acknowledge her fear and anxiety and show her that we will protect her.
This has introduced me to a different perspective that I’m going to investigate in the treatment of anxiety in dogs. The standard advice is to ‘behave normally’ but there is now reason for me to think that there are dogs for whom this is not an appropriate response. I will certainly be giving this more thought and exploring the possibility that there needs to be a change in the way that behaviourists deal with anxiety or fear in the home…
