Storm Season is Upon Us

Last Wednesday, we had our second thunderstorm of the season. This is significantly fewer than we would normally have by now. The storm thankfully rolled in during the evening on my work at home day.

Miss Lee was very upset at first and ran downstairs and tried to dig her way through my office door. When she is scared she wants to either be outside or downstairs. I brought her upstairs and put on her thunder shirt and she 'settled' in the kitchen. For Hailey, she was very calm, just sitting or standing and panting.

Phod, who use to never show any real reaction to storms, has learned to be fearful from Hailey. While he has never been destructive (go back to around August 12, 2012 to see her worst damage ever), he does want to be near you and pant. 

Emma is oblivious to it all, and I only got her in this picture because she was interested in what I may be cooking in the kitchen. 

I spent my evening while the Man was out cooking (which is so rare) and trying to comfort my dogs. I hope we don't have too many storms (or wind, or fireworks) this season. 

The miracle pill that wasn't

After very careful consideration and consultation with our vet we decided to try Miss Hailey Bug on a medication to help with her anxiety. While I really didn't want to get to this point the stress of worrying about what she might do while we were out and the reality that we could not stay home all the time pushed me to try it.

Modelling the new thunder shirt

After a funny trip to the pharmacy to fill the prescription (I love that is says for Vet use only on the bottle, yet the fact sheet about the drug tells you not to drink while on it - Lee says it will be hard, but she will try not to drink), we gave it a try. Woody had suggested trying it for 10 days to break the cycle of anxiety. With a heavy heart (because I truly feel we have failed her given how anxious she is) we gave her the first pill at a time where we could watch her. If anything, she was more crazy, more fearless, doing more crazy play stuff. The second one didn't seem to have any noticeable effect either.

She has now been receiving this pill 2 times a day since Saturday night with no obvious change. In fact, she actually scratched the wall which we had almost finishing repairing on Tuesday (no thunderstorms came through).

One of the challenges with her anxiety is it is not consistent. It is not every day that she destroy things. You never know.

Yesterday we tried to keep the dogs in the basement (away from the wall to destroy). Hailey was in her new thunder shirt. They got out of the basement and were sitting waiting by the door when I returned, but no damage.

Not sure what we will do next. Sigh!