Cooper's Journey: Living With A Dog With Separation Anxiety

I wrote the first half in 2013, and there is an 2015 update in the second half of the blog. Enjoy!

MAY 2013: It's been a while since I've written a blog. Things have been going well this year although I'm overwhelmed by the fact that it's already May! Nearly half way through 2013!!!!!

In late January my husband and I decided to adopt a shelter dog from a rescue facility in Aloha, OR. We had no real intention to get a dog that fateful day in January, and had only wanted to walk some dogs in Petco for fun while on our way to Home Depot. Before we were set to leave, I saw a dog out of the corner of my eye pressing on the pen and pleading with his eyes to take him home. It was one of the dogs we had walked and he had done well walking on a leash. The look on his face melted my heart and I looked at my husband and he then asked the rescue worker about how to adopt him.

We changed the dog's name from Vilmer to Cooper, and immediately fell in love with his energetic personality and his desire to cuddle and learn new tricks for food. I mean, look at his eyes? How could you not fall in love?

Having adopted a shelter dog with lots of baggage in the past, I was very worried that this would be another "Bandito" situation (which you can read more about in an old blog post). A lot of shelter dogs come with issues that may have placed them in shelters in the first place. Even when you want to do the right thing and give them a good home, for many of them the damage is already too much. There is very little you can do except accomodate their needs and proactively manage the issues they cannot change from.

So what was Cooper's baggage? Well, we learned very quickly that Cooper suffers from severe separation anxiety. We are talking very high-end so stressed out that he shits, pees, and injures himself trying to escape from his crate or literally chewing the front door down. Thank goodness he's only 13 pounds! Even if it was for a quick step outside to grab the mail, Cooper had to be right by the door to make sure you came back to get him. Luckily for him I work from home so the time he stays home by himself is very limited. However, even in that limited time he manages to find a way to bleed himself from digging and has even escaped the crate a few times and ended up doing damage in the house.

During that time both my husband and I did lots and lots of reading about training dogs with separation anxiety. We watched tons of videos from the library, Amazon, and Youtube, and listened to many of our friends and families with pets and their suggestions. We used the thunder shirt, kong, pheromones,  natural herbs, and did everything we could make his time alone tolerable and comfortable.  We stagger train him to be on his own to this day. Unfortunately, nothing worked for the longest time. It's very hard to see our dog injure himself and bleed while having to clean up his poop and pee every time we left. We even recorded him to see what he did when we were gone and it was difficult to watch how bad his anxiety got. I wondered, "Why does he think we are going to abandon him when we love him so much?"

Finally, one day I brought it up to my vet and she recommended putting Cooper on Fluoxetine, or Prozac. At first I balked at the idea because I'm 100% against pharmaceuticals in general.  With the exception of aspirin and ibuprofen and some antibiotics, I generally believe in using natural herbs to help treat and cure ailments. My husband is even more against pills than I am. So I refused and wanted to keep trying to use behavior modification to help him with coping with when we leave.

Another month went by and we did not see any improvements. In fact, it was getting worse. Cooper's separation anxiety started manifesting in other ways. In one such occasion when he was left with our friends or family in a separate room from us, even though he can see us from his crate it was too much for him to bare. He howled until his anal glands stank. That's no fun to clean.

So I went and asked the vet for a prescription. My husband was not happy I got it so I told him that we would use it only when he's ready to give it a try. After a particularly bad crate day where Cooper dug in his crate until his paws were skinned red and bled all over the crate, he finally agreed it was time to try something to help in conjunction with our modification training.

I know what a lot of people are thinking and I struggled with this myself and that's "Why do you need to drug up your dog? That's abuse and maybe you are not fit to be an owner." There was very little information  online to on pet owners who did use the drug because nobody wants to be ridiculed for being a bad dog owner. Nobody wants to be told they are poisoning their dog and doing more harm than good. However, the little information that was out there was very helpful and gave me a good idea of what to expect.

Fluoxetine takes about 3-4 months to really see the full effects on an animal and even then it helps the dog from rising into extreme anxiety, but they still are confused and need to learn ways to deal with when you are gone.  Behavior modification training and desensitization training to anxiety triggers are key at this point. Cooper's triggers included anytime he saw me put makeup on, when we jangled keys, when we locked the door, etc. It was hard but we had to teach him that these noises do not mean we will be leaving him. Eventually he stopped howling the entire time we were gone and started relaxing a bit. After 10 months he was noticeably more sleepy on the medication and enjoyed going to bed early. After a few more months, he did a lot better. That, combined with a lot of modification training, really started to pay off. I couldn't believe it. But at the same time I couldn't wait to ask my vet to help with weening down his dosage and taking him off the pills completely.

Let's fast forward a year and a half from the first part of the post.

Jan 2015: It's been 2 years since he's adopted Cooper, and he's no longer on doggy prozac. We slowly weened down his dosage over the past year and his personality has blossomed! He's such a momma's boy! We have no clue what his true age is, but he still loves learning new tricks. Does he still suffer from separation anxiety? Yes. Are there good days and bad days? Yes, but mostly good with a few bad days sprinkled in once or twice a month. 

So what happened? We continued with our stagger training, and also made sure to socialize him and help him understand that the house is his safe place. We also make sure to give him the best treats that make the act of leaving less painful for him. Even though I work from home, I put his bed in a separate room and he enjoys his naps on his own. The snoring is a good indication he's very happy. We also do not leave him in a crate which gives him the freedom to roam around and pick whether he wants to sleep in our bedroom or on the living room couch. Most days he's not right at the door when we come home, and he is trotting out from the bedroom to greet us after a nice long nap. That makes me really happy.

The only thing is that he's still fixated on the front door. So when he's having a bad episode we can guarentee he's going to scratch the front door when we are away.  My husband put plexy glass on the door to stop the damage and it worked for a while, but now he's attacking the molding on the side of the door. It's hard to know when he will have an episode, so we are working to figure out what to do next. The good thing is that he's not hurting himself or getting splinters from the wood, but I do worry about the paint he may be ingesting. The main goal here would be for us to get Cooper from being fixated with the door.

So when it comes to our dog's separation anxiety, I can definitely say he has improved a lot. Like any humans with anxiety, there are many ways to deal with it and it takes time. A lot of time. Sometimes medication is the answer, other times it isn't. Sometimes it requires a mix of meds and behavior training. For Cooper, he needed a combination of both. If things got worse would I put Cooper back on prozac? I would have to carefully monitor and speak to my vet and behavioralist before making that choice. Although I am very anti-meds, it's not something I would completely rule out. What you do with your fur family members is entirely up to you. I just wanted to share this story with others so readers can see what my family's journey was like, and what we are working on today.

What are some good things that came from this journey? Can I say this has enriched my life? That is showed me what kind of man I am married to? (All good things, btw). Through it all, I absolutely love Cooper and am happy he chose us to be his dog parents. And no matter what pops up, I know we have a strong loving family and tons of patience to help Cooper be the happiest dog he can be.