Anxiety Medication Update - Fluoxetine

We are almost at the three month mark which is crazy. It felt like we tried and waited for so long to get Roo on medication and now it feels like she has been on them forever.

Life with Roo feels like night and day and sometimes like nothing has changed. It is still early days and medication does not solve every problem, it just aids things.

At home for the most part, Roo is a dream now. She settles down and goes to sleep, she hardly steals anything and wants to be around us. She still barks at noise outside sometimes but it is a lot less and we are working on her barking when the door goes. We are able to have people over and they are able to enjoy time with Roo as well.

We had a couple of friends over for dinner last week, one hadn't seen Roo in months and the last time she was at our house for a BBQ, Roo was a nightmare. She was running around, jumping on people, jumping on the table, just pure choas! This time, Roo barked when she came in - fine, she hasn't seen her in months and Roo always barks when someone comes in. Roo went over and sniffed her before throwing herself at her feet for attention. She was happy to have them sit on the floor with her, giving them lots of attention. Whilst we ate, Roo laid happily in her bed, not bothering anyone. It was amazing!

Before medication, we would have never achieved this.

Roo is also now allowed to spend the day in our home office with us, before meds, she would not settle up there. She took things, chewed things and just ran around. Now she comes up, has a sniff about and typically get in her bed and sleeps! The first few times we let her up it was more chaotic but it probably only took two weeks of us letting her up here that she settled down. In a new environment, you really do just have to keep trying it until it becomes less exciting.

Naps! We can now all take naps together on the bed. Again, this would have sent Roo into overdrive but now after a walk or if we are having a lazy day, we can all get into bed and have a little nap. It is these simple things that we thought would just be a given when getting a dog that we are enjoying so much at the moment.

It isn't all perfect. Roo's lead walking is still crap - training it is going better than before but still urghhh! The barking in the house is still a thing, less but it is still there. Roo can be a little unresponsive on walks if she sees too many dogs or people so it's a hard balance going out with her still. Trying to expose her to things but not overdo it - all our reactive dog parents will get that.

Our main focus at the moment is getting her to be calmer around Molly's parents dog. Roo just cannot settle around him and pesters him the whole time we are there unless we seperate them, which we can do but it doesn't fix the issue. our behaviourist recommended taking her over for 15/20 minutes at a time a couple of times a week so going there and seeing him becomes boring. If she won't leave him alone she has to go on her lead and sit by one of us to get the message that if she wants freedom, she needs to leave him alone.

It is still very early days with this. We have been told it will probably take 50 trips for her to get over it! We need to Roo to be able to go to Molly's parents easily as they look after her if we need to go away or have plans meaning we will be away from home for longer than 4 hours. Fingers crossed over the next couple of months this improves as well.

We often have to remind ourselves of how far we have come, it is easy to get caught up in how far you still have to go but honestly medication has saved our life with Roo. Without it, we are not even sure if we would have been able to keep her.

We cannot wait to see where the next 3 months takes us.