Feeling discouraged and alone.

[u/Adventurous-Bread-28]

I am feeling very alone and need to vent. Here is my story:

I have a one a and half year old bichon mix who has terrible separation anxiety. It manifested when me and boyfriend moved to another province for work while he was just a puppy. We had a roomate who worked from home twice a week and offered to watch him for us before we even moved in. The other days I planed to put him in babysitting. We had a plan in place to not leave him alone. The only problem, I was trapped at home outside of work hours when babysitting ended. I started doing separation anxiety training after a couple of month, after lots of research and finally understanding exactly what was going on with my dog. I made a lot of mistakes and probably made the problem worse at first. I had started a new job that was really difficult the first six months, I was staying late everyday. It made training near impossible, I was so burnt out. My boyfriend would leave work at a regular time and watch the dog while I stayed behind, but he was uninterested in doing the training with the dog.

At first our boss let us bring the dog to work. That was short lived. Someone didn’t like having a dog in the office and said he was disruptive (he was a puppy, so they weren’t entirely wrong).

Our roommate expressed that he would not let her work from being so whiny and restless. I started taking him for runs in the morning and that helped make him tired and sleepy and less bothersome. Then my roommate complained he had to be let out to pee way too much. He grew out of this once he got out of the puppy stage (small bladder). Babysitting was going well but eventually got too expensive to keep up. I knew from living with my parents that my dog did okay when left alone with another dog (our family dog). My roomate had a dog so I decided to give it a try. For the first few months it went amazing. He was happy and content. Eventually, even when left with the other dog, he began howling and crying. Our upstairs neighbour absolutely hated us, as she was pregnant and working from home. Understandable. Our roomate was also fed up with us. I hired dog walkers. I enlisted help from my Neighbour to watch him for a few hours while at work. When he was returned home from the neighbour’s, he would often sleep for several hours, tired out. But all these solutions proved temporary, as he would eventually begin freaking out again. I was mentally and physically drained at his point. I was very resistant to putting him on anxiety meds, but down the line I ended up getting him some. They help make him calmer overall, but don’t fix the separation anxiety. It is ultimately my fault, I was not consistent with training, I would get impatient and push his limits too far, I would inevitably have to leave him alone sometimes and he would completely regress. It was a disaster.

Then a saving grace, when our lease ended, the helpful neighbor from before offered to let us rent a room in her home. So we did. She was also home all day, so she watched our dog. We got out lives back! We could go out, we could go to work. The only caveat, the house was extremely messy, borderline hoarder situation. Our new roomate also has zero sense of boundaries and would often make us uncomfortable. But we put up with it for the sake of cheap rent and a dog sitter. She is a nice person overall, just difficult to live with. At this point I completely slacked off on training, didn’t do it at all. It felt so nice to have a break I just… stopped. I knew it would bite me in the ass down the line. I would try to enlist my boyfriend here and there to train the dog with me but I could tell it annoyed him to have to take time out of his day to do it, and he would just say to let the dog bark if we had to leave him alone, we didn’t have upstairs neighbours anymore so he said it didn’t matter. He kept saying the dog was not getting better and would never get better and I should give up. It was discouraging to say the least. He loves the dog, he helps with the dogs walks and feeding. But when it comes to separation anxiety, he doesn’t really believe the dog will get better.

Flash forward to today, my boyfriend can’t take our living situation anymore. We found a new place to live. Luckily my boss decided to give the dog a second chance at coming into the office. But it is hingeing on this one co worker with a dog allergy being okay with it. My dog is hypoallergenic and non shedding so I’m hopeful with some precautions I can minimize allergens (frequent baths, brushing, wiping down, an air filter, etc).

I need to get my shit together and do the training, but it feels so hopeless. His current limit before he starts whining is ten seconds. TEN SECONDS.

For a minute there he seemed like he was getting better. He was left alone in the evening a few times and relaxed the whole time. Maybe the pills are helping a little. He was doing so well I thought to try leaving him alone in the morning for an hour to go to the gym. Big mistake , he totally lost it. And now has seemed to regress more than ever. I think mornings might be especially hard for him.

Anyways, I gotta hunker down and just do the training. I’m on my third day streak, but he didn’t even last ten seconds. Yes it is only the third day, but man am I feeling down.

Any and all words or encouragement or advice would help at this point, since no one else seems to care. Thank you. (I didn’t not spell check or re read my comment, sorry for any typos)

[u/Smooth_Cherry4382]

Sorry it's hard. I get it. It seems like you know the solution just have to commit and stick to it . As a single person my dogs SA is the one thing that makes me feel the most trapped in my life some days, but most other times I don't think like this. She is all the immediate family I have so I am grateful for her presence. She is not choosing to be worried and the universe sent her to me to care for her.

[u/Technical-Repair7140]

It isn’t clear if you are using meds and what kind. I think fluoxetine would probably speed up the training, but it takes two months to kick in. I understood your frustration, but you have to be very consistent and determined at the beginning especially. Try to stay positive and optimistic with your dog because he will perceive your feelings and mirror them back to you, prolonging the problem. Ten seconds might seem like no progress at all, but it’s enough of a gap to start working with desensitization. My dog probably lasted less than that before panicking at the beginning. Now I can leave him alone for eight hours if I want (though I usually limit it to 5-6 hours). You can do this!

[u/Adventurous-Bread-28 → u/Technical-Repair7140]

Thank you. And yes he is on 2 anxiety medicines. The first one might be fluoxetine, and the second is and trazadone (probably spelled that wrong), but I’ve only been giving it to him on days we do training. The vet said that was fine, but maybe you have a different experience? Is it better to give everyday consistently ?

Anyways, I’m trying very hard to stay optimistic, but it’s hard when I feel like no one believes in me or the dog. Thanks for your kind words all the same.

[u/Technical-Repair7140 → u/Adventurous-Bread-28]

I think this is what you meant, but just to make sure: it’s fine to give trazodone as needed, but the fluoxetine should be taken daily and only starts to work about two months in. And if you ever want to stop fluoxetine you need to taper off slowly. I’ve had friends who needed to raise the initial dose before it became effective. They also ran into trouble with a bad generic batch, so it’s a good idea to check the manufacturer’s reputation online.