Living with an anxious dog

Hailey had an anxiety problem. She is not our first dog to have one. Our Gemi suffered from anxiety. She chewed walls when she was young and we went out. When Loki was dying she developed obsessive drinking and peeing (by obsessive I mean my 15 lb pup was putting back 8 cups of water a day). Her hair fell out she was so stressed.  There was something about Gemi's anxiety that made it seem smaller, maybe because she was smaller.

Hailey is another story. Her anxiety causes me anxiety. Her destruction knows no bounds. [I do count myself lucky that she has left the furniture alone]. Part of the problem we have dealing with this is we don't always know what is going to set it off. We do know thunder is a big cause and change. However, she can go weeks without any incidents of destruction and then one day you come home and she has destroyed something. This makes it frustrating at times.

One thing that does set her off is having people in the house. But again it is not consistent. We can have guests she doesn't know and after her first few minutes of barking be fine. [We have friends and family she is not anxious with when they visit]. We can have others that even with her thunder shirt or leash she won't settle. It is worse with little kids who run around. She stands and barks and barks and barks, which can upset the kids and make it hard for the adults to visit. We end up feeling embarrassed because she won't stop barking and sorry for her, because she is stressed and everyone gives their attention to our calm Phod. 

 Here are some of the things we have tried that have not been as helpful as we would have liked:

One of the 2 crates she destroyed

- crate training. This had been my dream, but after she destroyed the second crate (the one no dog was suppose to be able to get out of), we realized that wasn't working. 

-medication. That experiment was taken on semi-reluctantly after she ate the wall and  failed big time as the drugs seemed to act as speed and made her crazy hyper (and made her pee all over the floor).  Our Vet said we could try other drugs, but since (knock on wood) her anxiety hasn't been as bad (meaning we still have all our walls), we aren't actively exploring this.

Things that may help:

-exercise, especially when she is going to be alone. I try and tire her out with a big walk/run before we go out.

-routine: Walks same time, feeding schedule the same, just consistency in our in and out. She gets the "guilt greenie" every time we both leave the house.

-Phod - I think except the week they ate all the tupperware, not being alone helps her.

-Free access to only part of the house. They have access to the upstairs hallway and kitchen/dining room (which is a HUGE space - probably about 1000 square feet) while we are out. So it is like being crated, without being crated.

-Thunder shirt, aka the hug. While she still appears anxious while wearing it, she is not as frantic. She tends to just sit (which reduces destruction).
-Mental challenges: working on new tricks/doing training more often.
-Cleaning the environment (making sure the counters are free of the things she may be tempted to destroy)

While her anxiety can be stressful for the whole pack (and has us all practice the virtue of patience), we truly love our challenging girl. We will continue to work to find ways to help her be more relaxed. Maybe one day our girl will overcome it.