Not related to shyness

Except as how not being as shy may be influencing things.  

Katie seems to have dropped a noticeable amount of weight recently.  She is also seeming to be hungrier than normal (tonight she counter-surfed a soy sauce packet from last night's Chinese, something she generally never does.)  She had been getting 2 cups of Taste of the Wild a day, and keeping a fairly steady 54-58 pounds (sometimes up a bit sometimes down a bit, but mostly in the middle there).   She has been getting more exercise, going from staying at home pretty much all the time to actually going on walks several times a week (Pixie is a good influence!), which is the most likely cause of the weight loss.  The second most likely cause I can think of is hookworms (well, worms in general, but hookworm is the one that she has come down with before), but I am not seeing any of the other symptoms that I have in the past.  I am going to up the amount to 3 cups a day and see what happens in a week.  

Pictures for reference:

[IMG]http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh51/philospher77/IMG_0630.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh51/philospher77/IMG_0631.jpg[/IMG]

We'll see how things go.

Pixie Notes

Took Pixie for a walk.  Things were going pretty good.  There were sprinklers going off by the school, out in the ball field and along the non-school side of the sidewalk.  Pixie did good walking by them, and taking treats, but did the "treats are poison!" thing when we were past them.  Would take treats dropped on the ground.  Tried different hand positions, across body/same side, left/right, no real differences seen.  Dropping treats on ground near hand with treats in it (done on accident) got her back to taking treats from hand.  Then walked past some people getting in car, and a few houses later Pixie started barking facing back where we had been.  At people in car?  Or possibly at a dog's yard?  It was dark, so not sure exactly what set her off.  Once again, treats are poison.  And then we walked past a car in driveway, and she was startled by a dog that was with some people sitting on the driveway on the other side of the car.  I don't know which started barking first, but she did come along and grumbled, but no real resistance.  Took a few treats on the ground, but then took from hand.

So, maybe it's an issue of stress stacking?

Side note:  when we were back home inside, she was bouncing off the walls!  Let her outside, thinking she needed to go potty, and she tore off doing zooms (granted, not greyhound zoomies, but the best she could do_.  And ten she spent quite some time hunting insects of some sort, I think beetles.  So whatever stress she was under was apparently not that severe.

Decided to go back to updating

Tried the car thing again this evening.  It seemed to go ok.  She was relaxed, the neighbors were either talking or watching something on TV, so I had something to DS/CC to.  And I had liver paste!  So did some of that for a bit, went back into the garage, and tonight she was willing to come out of the car with no fuss.  So I think it went well.

I also need to check on how long it took for Katie to get over the side-effects of the Prozac when we started.  She's been a bit "off"... more lethargic than normal, doesn't want to go outside, etc.  But I seem to recall she acted like this when I started this drug, so this may go away as she gets acclimated.

Quick update on the drug situation

Realized that I sort of left the issue hanging in the last post were I talked about adjusting the dose.  After meeting with the vet,  I decided to try the DAP collar.  Didn't see any changes with that, so we have now increased the Prozac to 30 mg from 20 mg.  (Side note:  20 mg caplets of Prozac run around $13.  Ask for the same amount, in tablets, so that you can give half-tablets to make 30 mgs, and the price goes up to $151!  Thankfully, the pharmacist agreed to give me 10 mg capsules, so that I could give 2 or 3, which was back to the 13 dollar price.)  I'm on week two of 30 mgs.  Not seeing a whole lot of changes yet, but not seeing the side effects that I did when I first started her on the drug either.  I've also eased up on counter-conditioning, since I am starting to think about getting a second dog to fulfill some of my dog needs (a friendly, out-going dog who LIKES walks and classes and going out in crowds of people) instead of trying to force Katie to meet those needs.

Tried something different today

I had to put Katie on leash to get her out for her final potty break, so I was thinking about taking her out for a short walk.  Of course, I thought that after I took the leash off, so in order to get her to position where I could leash her, I asked her if she wanted to go for a ride.  That got her into the garage, where I got the leash on.  But then she didn't want to move away from the car.  So fine, I decided to use take her out in the car.  Given that it was almost midnight by this point, I decided to just pull out onto the driveway and see what she did.  Opened up the tailgate, and tried to get her to take some treats, which she wouldn't.  Note to self:  bring higher value treats next time!  After her just lying there for a little bit, she got up and walked to the tailgate and stood there.  I'm not sure if she was being hyper-vigilant, or just interested in all the new sights and sounds, because she was definitely sniffing and scanning the area.  Tail was pretty neutral, ears were alert, but there wasn't a whole lot of tension in her body language.  After a bit, I went ahead and closed the tailgate, at which point she went and laid back down, and ate the treats I fed her, bit by bit.  Then I drove back inside the garage.  She was reluctant to get out of the car.  Had to go get the cheese to convince her to do that!  So I would say the entire situation was somewhat stressful, but not overwhelming.  If I had had the cheese while in the driveway, I think she would have been happier about the whole situation.  I think I may try this again.

Katie's startle reflexes are up

I'm going to be setting a follow-up appointment with the behaviorist.  I think we need to tweak the dosage a bit.  She doesn't seem to have the spark that she did on the Elavil, and she is showing stress signs that are unusual.  For example, when I did the first agility class the first time, Katie was perfectly happy to go out in the room and do the Touches and Targets and Get Readys.  That was the day before I started weaning her off the Elavil.  By the second class, a week later, she wouldn't leave her place.  Totally shut down, which is why I pulled her from the class.  Sunday, which would have been the start of the 7t week on the Prozac, when we were in class, she was somewhere between the two.  Wouldn't leave her place, but would do Touch at it, lying down.  Did some very nice Say Hellos (sitting and shaking).  And was willing to relax at her place, with her back against the wall.  Not stressed... her muscles were loose, no tension in the face, no panting, alert interest in some of the other dogs, especially the Irish wolfhound, and she was perfectly willing to eat her peanut butter bone.  Some potential differences between the two situations is that the first class was smaller (7 dogs total, instead of 10), and I had spent some time doing DS/CC at the class building prior to the class session (taking Katie there off-hours, and just hanging out with her and treats and doing the tricks that she knows, so that the place was more familiar to her and less stress).  The last experience she had before this session was when she was totally shut down.  I am going to see if I can try the off-hour thing again to see if that makes a difference.  And I had peanut butter balls the first class, and liver for this session, and it turns out that Katie much prefers peanut butter over liver.  Go figure!

At home, she doesn't come out to meet me like she used to.  She is generally in her safe place, sometimes in the other bed, and about 20% of the time she will come out to the hallway.  She is perfectly happy to see me when I go to her, and sniffs me all up and down the arms (which is a somewhat new behavior for her... she would sniff before, but not as intensely, and this generally winds up with her sniffing up the arm, back down, and then licking my palms).  Lets me pet her, and sometimes chatters, but not as much as when she was on the Xanax.  That had been happening at least once a day on the Xanax, now it's maybe 4 times a week.  She does quiver her jaw, which she would do before chattering, but doesn't seem to quite get to the chatter stage.

And she is startling pretty badly to sudden sounds, but recovers almost immediately.  But the startle seems out of proportion to the sound.  When I had her out on a walk, and someone dropped a water bottle right in front of her, she jumped but then kept on walking without any overt signs of stress.  I figured that was a pretty reasonable response.  I jumped at the noise, figure it's ok if she does.  But tonight, I offered her a handful of food, and she was more interested in sniffing the arm and hand, so I threw the food on her bed a foot away.  The sound of the food hitting the bed caused the same kind of jump, after which she went over and ate the food.  And this was only about 8 pieces of kibble hitting a dog bed, so just a little pattering sound.

At the same time, she is being responsive to doing tricks for dinner.  And she seems to be pretty comfortable out in the yard.  If I don't hover over her, and just putter around out there doing "outside stuff", she is a relaxed dog sniffing around and looking/listening to things.  On leash for DS/CC, she is being responsive, especially if there are no human noises.  Then she will go up to the gate to do it.  With the weather being nicer, the kids are staying out playing later, so it is making it more stressful for her.  On those days, we tend to be only maybe a foot or two off the front porch stoop.  She will do Touch, with the occasional stop and listen if she hears the kids out in the street, but will then turn to me and go back to the game after a second or two.  Possibly shorter time, since I am bad at guestimating.  I'd say that she seems alert, but not necessarily stressed.  I try to keep those episodes short... 3-5 touches, so that she gets good treats and learns to associate that with the kids and being outside, and then we go back inside.

I am not sure if we need to up the dose (the startling to food being thrown on a bed and unwillingness to leave her safe place makes me think her anxiety level may still be higher than we would like), or if we need to decrease it, since one of the side effects is lethargy, which may be why she is staying on her bed, being relaxed but unwilling to work in class, and just generally seeming to not have quite the same zest as before.  I am also down to the quarter-pill stage of weaning her off the Xanax, which may also be contributing to some of this.