An important factor in monitoring anxiety is how quickly your dog is able to recover from a reaction.
I wish I had been logging this as George has made huge improvements in this area.
At the beginning, and for quite some time, he didn't recover from one reaction to the next. He was constantly reacting so there wasn't any time to recover. This of course is a vicious circle which is very challenging to address.
As he was so sensitive to noise, it was very difficult to manage his environment despite my best attempts.
It was really only when we started the medication (Clonidine) that he was able to start recovering after a reaction. That's been one of the most significant benefits of the medication.
Now that George is handling noise better and I have learned how to manage his environment better, he has more time and space to recover. He's resting better which helps as well.
He seems to recover pretty quickly now. Even after large reactions. A big reaction will take longer to recover from than a more minor reaction, but it definitely doesn't have the same vicious circle effect we were dealing with earlier.
A note of caution though: there have been some significant events which he seemed to handle well at the time but I'm pretty sure they tipped him into more severe reactivity (when he was chased by a dog, and another time he was bowled over and snarled at by a dog).
He appeared to shake these off at the time. Looking back, these were obviously scary events. Even though George seemed fine, I should have recognised that he probably wasn't. I should have allowed him more space and time to recover, and managed the environment to reduce triggers, rather than carrying on as normal.
I've learned a lot since then.
On the whole, we've come a long way from where we were. It felt impossible to make any progress with behaviour modification when George was constantly at a high level of stress. I'm very grateful that George is starting to be able to self-regulate and rest after experiencing a reaction.