When your dog reacts to everyone and everything and can't be left home alone, it's difficult to know where to start. I realised we can't work on everything at once so needed to prioritise what would have the biggest impact on both of our lives and wellbeing.
First we needed to have a break from triggers to reduce the stress levels - a stress holiday. This was tricky as he has to go to daycare when I go to the office but we stopped going for walks for quite a while (around 3 months) and reduced triggers as much as we could. I limited visitors and instead of walks, we did lots of enrichment activities at home.
It's pretty isolating but we needed to reduce the stress before we could meaningfully work on desensitisation. It also gave some time for the medication to start working.
I decided the reactivity was impacting on my mental health more than the separation anxiety. As George has a fantastic daycare, we can just about manage with continuing to suspend absences. The constant barking and pacing at home was exhausting (for both of us) and meant George was not getting sufficient rest. Being able to relax in the home was therefore our number one priority.
This is how we decided to prioritise (all still in progress):
- Calmness and relaxation at home
- Reducing noise sensitivity at home
- Building confidence in leaving the house
- Slowly reintroducing walks and some triggers at a distance
- Building confidence in alone time
- Handling (cooperative care)
Future priorities include working on desensitising triggers in the car, reacting calmly to deliveries, and greeting visitors calmly.
And perhaps a distant dream:
- Calm daycare drop-off and pick-up
- Desensitising seeing the neighbours
For now, we are trying to avoid and manage triggers at daycare drop-off/pick-up and immediately outside the home. I am hopeful that the continuing confidence-building and overall reduced stress will eventually enable some desensitisation work in these areas.
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