A Jacey update

We're still having housebreaking issues, and I try not to let her out of my sight. She's good in the crate when I'm not home, though, so that's a relief.

I'm starting to wean her off the clomipramine. (She came off the Valium in June.) She'll be on a 75% dosage for a week, then 50% for two weeks, then 25% until this batch of pills is gone. It took two weeks for the drug to get to "working strength" in her system, so I'm assuming it'll take about as long before I see any signs of stress as she comes off the pills. But I'd be happy to have her off the pills (for a variety of reasons, including that I could find something else to do with that $60/month), so I'm hoping this goes well. The surest--and easiest to spot--sign of stress with her will be if she starts irritating her feet by pawing at the crate when I'm not home. That was the first sign I noticed--before I even knew she was stressing out.

Day 7

Day 7: NO BATH! She peed a very little bit in the crate, and it was soaked up by the shredded puppy pad. And she was certainly in a hurry to get outside to pee.

Two Valium, one Clomicalm at breakfast; one Valium, one Clomicalm at dinner. A short day: 10am-7:30pm (9.5 hours).

She's still not using the water bottle, despite another dollop of peanut butter on the nozzle today.

Day 6

Another day, another bath. She's starting to hate it when I come home. Is that going to be the key to getting her over her anxiety?

Day 6: Two Valium, one Clomicalm at breakfast. One Valium, one Clomicalm at dinner. A long day: 6am-7pm (more or less).

Shredded puppy pad, she peed (thus, the bath). Still no progress on the water-bottle front. (Gotta call Sidney...) She enjoyed the Kong.

(Gotta find a good whitening shampoo. The poor dog is turning yellow...)

Day 5

Day 5: Two Valium, one Clomicalm at breakfast. One Valium, one Clomicalm at dinner. I was gone from 6am-4pm.

Shredded puppy pad. Urine in the crate and on Jacey. (Another bath with the not-so-great shampoo.) I don't think she's actually rolling in the stuff; it's just there in the crate, with a shredded puppy pad that can't contain it all, and she's getting it on her.

She hasn't figured out the water bottle--as far as I can tell. I'll have to glob peanut butter on the nozzle tomorrow morning.

The Kong is a hit--with both dogs. They spent about 40 minutes this evening working their way through the Kongs before dinner.

She's asleep on the sofa, with her head hanging off the front, nearly to the floor. Sam's asleep on the sofa, with his head propped up on her butt.

I think I need to e-mail Sidney to ask about UTIs.

Day 4

Day 4: Two Valium, one Clomicalm at breakfast. One Valium, one Clomicalm at dinner. I was gone 9am-7:15pm (10.25 hours).

Shredded puppy pad again. She had pretty well emptied the Kong. (Sam barked at her when I left this morning and she had the Kong; he had nothing since he was muzzled. He polished up the Kong this evening. Tonight I'm freezing three Kongs: she can have one in the morning, and they each can have one in the afternoon.)

I think she peed a bit in the crate, but it mostly was soaked up in the shredded puppy pad. She certainly was in a hurry to get outside. I don't think she understands the water bottle at all. We'll have to work on that.

Day 3

Two Valium, one Clomicalm at breakfast. One Valium, one Clomicalm at dinner. I was away from home from 6am-4:45pm (10.75 hours).

Shredded puppy pad, up-ended water dish. More urine on her today than yesterday. (And the whitening shampoo I bought sucks...)

I got a water bottle for her crate, so no water dish tomorrow. And I bought some cottage cheese...need to stuff a Kong and freeze it tonight. Maybe she's just bored? But she's not messing with the Nylabone at all: there's not a tooth mark on it.

She hurt her feet some, today, but I'm not sure whether she did that in the crate or afterwards, when I took her outside. I just noticed small amounts of blood on her toes when we were hanging out after her bath (and she could have done something to her feet on the tie-out lines attached to the Dog Anchor at bath-time).

Tomorrow probably will be a long day (10-6 officially--unofficially, god knows). It'll be late when I get home, and it's supposed to be rainy. I won't be able to bathe her tomorrow night, so I'm hoping for a better day tomorrow than today. I don't want to ban her from my bed, but I'm not sleeping with a dog that smells of urine.

Edited to add: If she was worse today than yesterday, I've thought of one reason: the air show at Dobbins was today. She doesn't like the jets screaming overhead, and the show might have produced a lot of extra noise here, today.

Day 2

Second day crated and on meds: two Valium, one Clomicalm before work; one Valium, one Clomicalm after work. Long day: I was gone from 8-8:15 = 12.5 hours.

More pee in the crate, even in her water dish. (Is she using that to pee in?) Shredded puppy pad. Some urine on her back hip, but more like she just accidentally laid in it than the previous rolled-in-it event. I just wiped her down with a damp paper towel, then with a Listerine-damp paper towel. (Too late to bathe her and have any hope to get her dry. I'm due off work early on Saturday, and I'll bathe her then.)

She's had dinner and is sacked out on the sofa. She drank a lot of water after dinner--maybe because what wound up in her water dish in the crate was undrinkable? I'll have to see if there's some sort of water bottle I can use for the crate. Or a dish I can mount and affix to the crate--something she can't contaminate.

Day 1

Jacey's first day crated and on drugs: two Valium and one Clomicalm before work. One Valium, one Clomicalm after work. I was gone about 10.5 hours. (12-9 shift.)

She was noisy, stressed. Shredded the puppy pad. Peed a bit in the crate, but the pad absorbed it, so I didn't have to bathe her when I got home.

All well on the house-breaking front. And five minutes after she finished dinner, she was conked out on the sofa, sound asleep.

But she's more antsy about my being out of her sight. I can't go to the kitchen for a drink without a little jingling shadow tagging along.

Just call her...

…a handful? A problem?

I haven’t posted much about my new girl, Jacey-Kasey. I posted about the pantry raid: I could make that one sound funny. But there hasn’t been much fun or funny in her first 18 days here. I’ve never once slipped and called her, “Oreo.” Every day, in every way, she makes it clear she’s not Oreo.

I tried leaving Jacey muzzled, but free to roam the house. That produced some house-breaking issues (complicated by my long work hours—and really not her fault). And it also meant she had the opportunity to teach Sam about pantry shelves. (I swear, he’s following her around the house, watching what she does, and saying, “Wow! I never noticed that stuff up there! This is cool!” He’s like a not-too-sharp crime boss who’s just learned he’s got a super-smart underling: he likes the new dog’s ideas, but wants to ensure he gets the biggest share of the loot.)

We’re countering the housebreaking issues: lots of trips outside, with kibble in my pocket on every trip. Anyone who pees or poops gets kibble. Sam is making an art-form of this: pee a bit, get a treat, pee a bit more, get another treat. Meanwhile, Jacey is standing there, wondering why she isn’t getting any kibble. She hasn’t made the connection to food-as-a-reward. Once that sinks in, she’ll be much easier to train. (She thinks food shows up when it shows up—or when she raids the pantry.)

But after the pantry raid, I crated Jacey while I was at work. After all, she’s an ex-racer, used to being confined in a small area. The crate is 48Lx30Wx36H—plenty large enough for her—and set up in my bedroom upstairs. The first day, she had a blanket, a water dish, and a puppy pad in the crate. (A puppy pad is the equivalent of a disposable diaper/nappy: absorbent paper material with a plastic backing. Sam pees on a pad when my work day is too long and his water intake has been too high. Oreo never used the things. And Jacey…) Jacey had, literally, a shit-fit. She pounded it into the plastic tray of the crate, she embedded it in the blanket, she kicked some of it out of the crate (where Sam stepped in it, then scratched an itch…), and she rolled in it. When I got home from work, I spent more than an hour bathing her and Sam and cleaning the crate. Then I sat and cried. (I wanted Oreo back. Oreo was never that kind of trouble…)

That work day had been a long one, and I’d been gone from home for about 13 hours. Pooping or peeing in the crate in those circumstances is not unexpected. But the frenzied aspect of her behavior worried me.

I had a D.A.P.—dog appeasing pheromone—in a device you plug into an electrical socket. It mimics the pheromone produced by lactating bitches, and is supposed to be very comforting (effective in 75% of cases). I plugged it in in the bedroom, then went downstairs with the dogs. Humans can’t smell the pheromone, and Sam was completely uninterested. But Jacey reacted when the scent drifted down to us, and went upstairs to find that nursing mama dog. And it seemed to help—some—the next day. But I also worked a shorter workday—home in 9.5 hours—and that made a difference. Jacey didn’t have a blanket (no more blankets—the first one went in the trash), and she completely shredded the puppy pad (I’ve seen confetti pieces that were bigger), but no poop. She still was frenzied when I got home, whining, clawing frantically at the crate, and I don’t know how long that sort of behavior had gone on—too long, judging by the state of her feet. (Oh, and she had a durable Nylabone to chew on.)

Day 3 in the crate: another shredded puppy pad. And a neighbor out walking his dog heard Jacey whining and fussing and thought she might have been reacting to hearing him. I think a big problem is that Sam is not staying upstairs with Jacey—there’s no way I can barricade him in the room to make him stay (it’s a loft bedroom, no door, and only a 3-foot wall on one side, overlooking the living room; I can’t trust my idiot boy not to try to jump the wall if he wants out, because he has no way to see how far he’d fall). So Jacey is suffering from separation anxiety because I’m not there and because Sam is out of her sight.

Day 4 in the crate: I left a thunder-and-rain CD playing all day in hopes of drowning out external noises, so she’d sleep more. (The CD plays all night while we sleep, so she’s used to hearing that sound and isn’t alarmed by it.) I didn’t leave a puppy pad, this time. And I came home to a frenzied yellow-and-black dog. Another bath was required. (And Sam, who ran into her, needed a bath, too.)

So today I went to the vet. He agreed that she’s exhibiting classic separation anxiety symptoms, and they need to be treated before she hurts herself—and before she “trains” herself to panic every time she’s in the crate. So she’s on diazepam (one or two 10mg tablets, three times a day) and clomipramine (one 50mg capsule, two or three times a day). The diazepam (aka Valium) stops after a month or so (we hope); the clomipramine (aka Clomicalm) goes on for three months, at which time we do a liver test and consider weaning her off the drug if that seems feasible. (This is going to cost $3.25-$5.50 a day, depending on how much she needs…and I’m getting the drugs from a standard pharmacist, not the vet’s overpriced supply.) The hope is that after three months she’ll have learned that mom leaves, mom comes home, Sam wanders around, and the world doesn’t come to an end. (Oh, and the vet warned that diazepam is a mood-altering device—and sometimes you don’t get the mood you want. So there’s a risk she’ll pull an Edward Hyde-number.)

Thursday I work a noon to nine shift. I do not want to have to bathe a dog (or two) at 9:30 at night, so I’m hoping for the best.

If the drugs don’t work, we have other options. One possibility is moving the crate downstairs. This is not a good choice since the air conditioner downstairs is broken; the one upstairs works, and once Sam figures that out, he might stay upstairs more. But even if I move the crate, there’s no guarantee that Sam will stay in her sight. And even if he does, she’s still expressing anxiety when I’m out of her sight. So I’m really hoping the drugs can get this under control.

Meanwhile, I’ve got this dog with the most enormous pupils right now. {grin} Just call her spacey Jacey-Kasey…