AlisonandMia
01-23-2011, 07:43 PM
Well I'm back - I think. We are back home and have everything sort of in order again.
We had what I call a "dry flood" - that is our family went through everything (domestically speaking) except we didn't actually get flooded - two doors down did though so it was a very close thing. We packed up stuff and moved to higher ground, and very hurriedly turned a lot of stuff out of low cupboards and shelfs and up onto higher surfaces, thus making one heck of a mess. We also had no power for 5 days.
We lived at my mother's place for a week. The dogs were crated full time and needed two to three good walks per day. With the stress of everything and the relocation, Zac's latent separation anxiety (always knew there was an issue lurking) came out in full force (:eek::eek::eek:). Every time I left the house he howled and yowled and was terribly upset. I eventually worked out that I to plan my day so I left the house without him no more than four times as the stress of my disappearances seemed to accumulate during the day. At home he is outwardly fine about my going out but in a strange environment it seems to be more than he can handle.
And now comes a cautionary tale: By about the fifth day he was getting himself in a fine old state (I'd been coming and going a lot that day) so ol' Clever Clogs here decides to give him some Valium. Should have been a good idea - would have calmed down most dogs... But not Zac. He was one of the rare few who get what is called a "paradoxical reaction".
He went completely hyper, appeared to lose all inhibition and his attentional system just stopped working - basically severe ADHD! He was just a mass of instincts and conditioned reflexes (thank goodness he had a lot of those - at least his training made him controllable and allowed us to give him some focus.)
We ended up spending four or five hours with him in his crate getting him to do "tricks" like "sit", "drop" and "touch" to get tiny bits of dry dogfood (Evo Small Bites which are about the size of catfood). Everyone took turns amusing Zac this way and we ate dinner in shifts. Without that to focus his attention and give him an aim in life (he needed a new aim in life every ten seconds it seemed) he would just lose it completely and howl and bark and throw himself all over the place frantically. I think we ended up feeding him what amounted to a huge meal (not sure how much) - he put on about a pound overnight and had small pads of fat on his ribs in the morning!
Although Valium is a great drug for dogs (worked a treat the one and only time Mia took it) I would like to say that anyone using it for, say, a long car trip should give it at home first just to check that their dog isn't one of the ones that reacts badly to it. This reaction is seen in humans too and from what I've read is more common in people with neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions - Zac is a constitutionally very anxious individual who didn't have the best early socialization so that would kind of fit in his case. However it can and does happen to perfectly normal people and, presumably, dogs, too.
Another bit of fun has been that it appears that I somehow underdosed Tink with Advantix (some must have got spilled on her long fur or something) and she got fleas! (Zac didn't.) And I didn't realize and she ran around the house so now I'm worried that our house will have fleas. I sure hope that all the vacuuming we've done and the fact that the now-treated Tink is working as flea killing machine means that any flea eggs she shed won't amount to anything.
Tink cruised through the whole experience, of course, and was completely unphased by everything. I'm glad we have one normal dog!
Alison
We had what I call a "dry flood" - that is our family went through everything (domestically speaking) except we didn't actually get flooded - two doors down did though so it was a very close thing. We packed up stuff and moved to higher ground, and very hurriedly turned a lot of stuff out of low cupboards and shelfs and up onto higher surfaces, thus making one heck of a mess. We also had no power for 5 days.
We lived at my mother's place for a week. The dogs were crated full time and needed two to three good walks per day. With the stress of everything and the relocation, Zac's latent separation anxiety (always knew there was an issue lurking) came out in full force (:eek::eek::eek:). Every time I left the house he howled and yowled and was terribly upset. I eventually worked out that I to plan my day so I left the house without him no more than four times as the stress of my disappearances seemed to accumulate during the day. At home he is outwardly fine about my going out but in a strange environment it seems to be more than he can handle.
And now comes a cautionary tale: By about the fifth day he was getting himself in a fine old state (I'd been coming and going a lot that day) so ol' Clever Clogs here decides to give him some Valium. Should have been a good idea - would have calmed down most dogs... But not Zac. He was one of the rare few who get what is called a "paradoxical reaction".
He went completely hyper, appeared to lose all inhibition and his attentional system just stopped working - basically severe ADHD! He was just a mass of instincts and conditioned reflexes (thank goodness he had a lot of those - at least his training made him controllable and allowed us to give him some focus.)
We ended up spending four or five hours with him in his crate getting him to do "tricks" like "sit", "drop" and "touch" to get tiny bits of dry dogfood (Evo Small Bites which are about the size of catfood). Everyone took turns amusing Zac this way and we ate dinner in shifts. Without that to focus his attention and give him an aim in life (he needed a new aim in life every ten seconds it seemed) he would just lose it completely and howl and bark and throw himself all over the place frantically. I think we ended up feeding him what amounted to a huge meal (not sure how much) - he put on about a pound overnight and had small pads of fat on his ribs in the morning!
Although Valium is a great drug for dogs (worked a treat the one and only time Mia took it) I would like to say that anyone using it for, say, a long car trip should give it at home first just to check that their dog isn't one of the ones that reacts badly to it. This reaction is seen in humans too and from what I've read is more common in people with neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions - Zac is a constitutionally very anxious individual who didn't have the best early socialization so that would kind of fit in his case. However it can and does happen to perfectly normal people and, presumably, dogs, too.
Another bit of fun has been that it appears that I somehow underdosed Tink with Advantix (some must have got spilled on her long fur or something) and she got fleas! (Zac didn't.) And I didn't realize and she ran around the house so now I'm worried that our house will have fleas. I sure hope that all the vacuuming we've done and the fact that the now-treated Tink is working as flea killing machine means that any flea eggs she shed won't amount to anything.
Tink cruised through the whole experience, of course, and was completely unphased by everything. I'm glad we have one normal dog!
Alison