Five Weeks on Fluoxetine - Dog Anxiety

When we started Roo on anxiety medication we really didn't know what to expect. Would it make her a completely different dog? Would there be horrible side effects? Would it make things worse? Would it make a difference at all? But the results so far have been amazing!

We want to make it very clear though that Roo still has a lot of issues and putting your dog on anxiety medication is no quick fix.

It has been just over five weeks since we started Roo on Fluoxetine. To find out how the first week went - click here. There have been so ups and downs. Things started to make progress for the better - there was less barking at things, we started taking her to the park at the crack of dawn so she could have a run around and she was much happier to be lay in her bed with a toy. But after a couple of good days would come a day where she barked more, she was still pulling on her lead and going onto her back legs when she saw a person. At the park when we were all alone, she seemed on edge and alert. We couldn't really figure out what was causing it. We tried taking her to the park every other day to give her some time off. We tried going for two days straight then having a day or two off. We tried more mental enrichment. Nothing seemed to really make a difference or give us any insight in to what was going on.

On the whole though, things were better. Roo's off days now where still better than some of her better days before medication. Then something changed.

It was the day before christmas eve, christmas eve eve some might say. We both had the day off and had planned to take Roo to the park at 6:30am as we usually did, but overslept. We didn't make it to the park until 7:45am, a bit nervous about what might happen as we had no idea how busy it might be. When we arrived, the car park was dead - result! We started our walk into the field and all was good. Halfway through, we saw person with a dog off lead a good 30 metres away. We recalled Roo and started to walk in the other direction to create more space. The other persons dog however made a beeline for Roo. She hasn't encountered any other dogs (apart from Molly's mum's dog) since July, neither of us knew what was about to happen. We dropped the long line to avoid any tension. Roo sniffed the other dog and play bowing commenced. They chased each other for a few minutes and we recalled Roo. She ignored the first whistle call but came running back on the second, whilst she was mid chase with the dog! What a result.

We knew at this point, this was enough excitement for Roo for one day. However the park was now getting busier with people and the only way into the field was through a wooded area with not too much space to avoid people. We kept Roo a good distance from the area trying to find a gap in the people and dogs to make our escape! We didn't manage to though. A woman with two well behaved off lead vizslas passed us. Roo didn't react but did fixate and definitely wanted to say hello to the dogs. Next we encountered another two off lead dogs, both well behaved and didn't come over to Roo but she was now even more excited pulling on her lead. When we arrived back at the car, two or three off lead offlead dogs were in the carpark and someone was putting two cockerpoos into the car parked next to ours. Trying to wait it out and provide Roo with space was tough. We managed though, no outbursts or full reactions. Just a lot of lead pulling. A win in our books!

The next day, Christmas eve. Chloe got the train to Essex to be with her family and Molly took Roo to her parent's house to tire her out before Christmas day as the plan was for Roo to be at home on Christmas day alone. Molly was going to pop to her parent's house for Christmas lunch and come home again. Roo is generally very excited and overwhelmed at Molly's parent's house, she loves their dog Rosco - don't think he is too keen on Roo but he does very well to put up with her. The plan was to stay for a couple of hours and then go home. But Roo ended up doing really well, there were a few periods where she laid down! Six hours later and with one very tired Roo, we came home.

As Roo had done so well, the Christmas day plan changed to Molly and Roo going over together in the morning so open presents with everyone. Then when Molly's nan turned up with her dog, Roo would go home and spend a few hours on her own. But again, Roo surprised us all and did well when Molly's nan turned up. Yes she was excited, yes she wanted to play with the dogs but we were able to separate the dogs into separate rooms when needed and the day really wasn't that stressful! Another huge win for us. To spend the day with 6 people and 2 other dogs with very few issues, the dream. People kept commenting on how different she was, how much calmer she seemed.

Boxing day, Roo had a very chilled day at our house with Molly's mum coming over to look after her. Generally, Roo still stays in the dinning room most of the time. With all the christmas decs out, we didn't want to chance Roo stealing things or causing chaos. So that is what we thought Molly's mum would do but she left all the gates open and let Roo do what she wanted. And what Roo wanted to do was lay on the sofa all day snoozing! She was the perfect dog.

The following couple of days, we left the gates open for Roo and she was very happy sleeping on the sofa and wandering into the kitchen. We even gave her a chew. Doesn't sound like a huge thing but Roo tends to guard and worry about chews. Seems as she had been so good, we thought there probably wasn't a better time to try it out. She did so well, she was happy to chew the chew on the sofa with us. We could pick it up and it didn't worry her.

Now we are trying to leave the gate from the dinning room to the kitchen open during the day to see if anything happens. She used to steal the tea towels and guard them. If things keep going well, hopefully we can take that gate down in a couple of months - we hate having all these gates up!

Who knows what happened to Roo, maybe it was a Christmas miracle. Or maybe it is just the fact that she has been on them for over a month now and it is well and truly in her system.

Even with all these positive steps, we still have a long way to go. Roo's lead walking needs much improvement as does her fixiating and going onto her back legs when she sees people or dogs. At least we now finally have some much needed peace at home. We are all very thankful for this and it makes having Roo much more enjoyable for us. We no longer feel trapped in our own home by our dog.