Mischief Monday - Shredding

Hailey had a rough week and had us up every night in the middle of the night. The first night it was because there were actually fireworks at 1:30 am (which went on for like 20 minutes, insert HBO words here - stupid city-its). But the other nights there was no clear reason for us. I said to our vet "if we wanted to be up in the middle of the night, we would have had children." He laughed (I nannied his now adult children for like 8 years).

Our destruction this week was:

One of her beds in our closet

The sheets on our bed. This happened while we were out at our anniversary dinner. We aren't sure if she did this trying to bury the chicken foot we gave her or because she was stressed. I am going to have to see if I can fix them . . . . 

We also noted a new behaviour. When stressed Hailey is trying to "bury" things. In the closet she was taking things from the garbage or the laundry and pushing them obsessively with her head and paws.

We spoke to our vet and have decided to give meds another go. I think being medicated June-October may be how Hailey has to live as long as we live in cottage country (which we plan to do for at least another 20 years, so the rest of her life). She did amazing on them last summer and we only took her off because we don't like the possibility of long term health problems associated with long term use.  Because she faces her fear almost every night for at least 3 months (we live in cottage country so there are fireworks almost every night, if not it is usually because there is too much wind or thunder - her 3 main fears), we can't just do an occasional use pill. As I am preparing the post, it is windy. The windows are open as we have no a/c. She is pacing and whining and not happy. At 8 pm, she will go to her fortress in our basement bathroom and if we do take her out, will be so scared she will refuse to pee. So to help her with all of this, we will try her meds. We have about 2 weeks of a lower than she was on dosage of her pills left (it was when we were fading her off). We are going to start with that. If that is helpful, we will keep her on the lower dosage. If not, we will increase it.

It makes me sad that we can't help her with this in another way. But it also makes me sad to see her so stressed. While the Man and I love her, we can't give up hours of sleep a night because she thinks it would be safer to be outside at 4 am . . . . In the long term that is going to cost us our patience.

Let's hope her puppy prozac works.