Phoebe

Two years ago on June 18th, my life was turned upside-down.  A little hairy collie called Meg, with more than a few problems - nothing short of a basket case, frankly - joined my rabble after I spent three months trying to help her last owners help her; sadly, four years of not far short of mental torture in her last home through a combination of too little input at the start, stress, unpleasant behaviour from her people and very bad training techniques had created numerous and severe phobias, one of which was traffic.  As her last home was a country home but on an extremely busy country road - some 200 cars an hour on a quiet day, and the house right on the roadside - we had to concede defeat in the end and she came to live here.

She now goes by the name of Phoebe and two years on, is still basically a wreck of a dog but she has made a LOT of progress.  Her phobias still dictate most of her and our lives; she still cannot go for a walk more than twice a week because of the severity of those phobias but she is happy with that.  As her stress levels have dropped over those two years, individual triggers have become more clear and there is a long list of them - however they boil down to just a few things: mechanical/engine noises (farm vehicles, clippers, cars etc), sudden loud noises (thunder and fireworks) and handling.  The latter means that n her previous homes she was ungroomable - she can and would bite if people tried,so the first owners sent her off to be groomed.  Yes, they sent a car and handling phobic dog away in a van to be groomed.  Sigh.  Predictably this made her much worse, but landing here with me, with my grooming and behavioural experience, meant that at last she had the right approach and within 3 days of arrival, I had her de-knotted, trimmed and bathed properly.

Since then, each trim has gotten shorter until last year, when I decided to shave her in the heatwave as she was struggling.  Best decision ever - she is MUCH happier with very short fur, not just because of the heat but because I only have to brush her out once a month or so; and because she has some issues with physical contact with the others and it was extended to her longer hairs being brushed or trodden on so with those gone, she is much more confident in herself.

The one thing that has been the key to getting her to where she now - and beyond - is melatonin.  Between me and her last two homes, almost every preparation, herbal mix and a few prescription drugs have been tried to de-stress her, as progress was either painfully slow or non-existant because her stress levels were so high (fundamental law of working with damaged dogs: stress inhibits learning so you have to reduce that first or you will get nowhere).  They either sedated her, made her worse or did nothing.  One day I was trying again to find something new and purely by chance, I stumbled across a blog about melatonin and its use in storm phobias.  In that blog was a mention of how it can be useful for dogs with chronic stress problems.  Worth a try, I thought; the blog stated (with input from a veterinary behaviourist with considerable experience of it) that it offered no side effects and no sedation.  No addiction.  So I ordered some and it's been nothing short of a miracle.  I was reaching the point where her limited progress has plateaued, and I was beginning to wonder if it would be fairer on her to call time; but when you can still see the potential in a damaged dog, you are spurred on to keep looking for the next thing to try.  Good thing too or I'd not have found out about melatonin and she'd be a very different dog - and it wouldn't have helped many more besides her too.  But more on that in another post!

She still has such a long way to go, and I don't think I will ever be able to walk her past 6am (7am on a sunday) because of her hoover phobia which is perhaps the greatest of them all: one hint of that whine on the air and she goes into a blind panic.  As she is already dealing with many triggers when on lead, that one is simply too much and probably always will but but she has still made enough progress elsewhere that she is a hppy, if a little loopy, fluffball and that's what counts :)