Controlling, Obsessive and Neurotic Spaniel. Our journey to calmness [3]

It was back to the house and garden. Roo's world became our two bed mid terrace house. This was hard for us, we liked to take Roo out for new experinces, to let her run and be free. We had always wanted to give Roo the best experinces in life but right now, that is not what she needed. Again our issue not Roo's.

Roo's central nervous system needed time to recover, she needed calmness with as few triggers as possible. We were told it would take Roo's system weeks if not months to fully recover but the main issue right now was getting her anxiety down from it peak to a mid range for now, allowing us to work on things in a less heightened state. Then we would begin threshold training with her triggers, off lead walks etc.

The home is also were everything starts and we needed to get Roo to trust we could keep her safe here before she would ever believe we could do it in the wider world.

The new rules meant a lot of ignoring and when she finally settled or walked off somewhere else, then calling her to us for attention and cuddles. This was a hard adjustment. Removing her from the room was also difficult as she began redirecting onto us slightly and at times would guard her lead.

We also had new rules for food. Roo often leaves food and will go a couple of days without eating properly. The new rule. Eat something crunchy over her food, then put it down for her and walk away. She either goes over straight away and eats it or it gets picked up and she has to wait until the next meal time to eat. Day 1, no food. Day 2, some food. Day 3, no food. Day 4, tiny amount of food. Day 5 - 8, some food.

To fill the time between when she was asleep, loose lead walking as our saviour. We would do 6 sessions a day around 15 minutes each walking around the house and back garden, slowly making our way into the front garden and out of the gate. Each time she pulled, changing directions and correctly using the leash now we had been shown how! Working on problem areas or through issues, clipping away at it. The aim to slowly get further and further from the house but never going past a pulling zone until it had gone.

We could play with Roo on our terms but she often didn't want to or she would try and control play time. Running off with the toy, putting it down and lunging for it if we picked it up only to run off again. We tried playing with a ball for a few minutes at a time but it was too much for her. She was perfect playing with it, bringing it back to hand nicely. Complete engagement. But as soon as we stopped playing, she was head down searching. If we took her inside she would scrap at the backdoor to get out there to look some more. She would pace around and cry. Honestly, it was horrible to see her so obsessed. It would take her a good hour to settle properly from playing for 5 minutes.

It has been two weeks now and......