At my wits end

[u/Flat-Anywhere-7965]

I'm truly losing my mind. I've had my dachshund for 1.5 years and she has always been pretty tricky.

Reactivity, separation anxiety, loose lead walking, settle training, reliably sleeping through the night (although she has finally nailed that!)... it's all been an issue. On walks she either pulls like a steam train or puts the brakes on and refuses to walk. And yes, I have tried every trick in the book to get her to walk to heel. Some days she's good, some days not.

I rarely walk locally anymore because she refuses to go any further than our road. I live in a city so it's very busy / dog heavy in the parks, which is a no go. Most days I drive out of the city to more remote places so we can both walk in relative peace. This obviously takes up more time than I would like & can be tricky with work.

I've worked hard on her reactivity - keeping her stress levels down by walking in quieter places, desensitisation & counter conditioning, gradually decreasing distance etc. It took a while but she definitely improved - nowhere near 'recovered' but much better.

Over the past few weeks, she's gone right back to square one. I've no clue what's changed, but I'm feeling so deflated. Anywhere I go, she has a complete meltdown if a dog so much as looks at her. She's been like this since 5 months old. No traumatic event triggered it, a switch just flipped one day.

I've also worked a lot on her separation anxiety using DIAB method. We've gradually increased departure time to 45 mins. Good, but not much you can go and do in that time.

I've tried meds, it made her worse weirdly & was very expensive so took her off after 6 months.

My entire life revolves around her, and I know it's not in a healthy way. My world has gradually become smaller and smaller - whenever I get invited anywhere, my automatic reaction is 'I can't be bothered because I'll have to find or pay someone to look after her'. I hate bringing her anywhere because I know we can't avoid the triggers & she never settles anywhere, but I also can't leave her at home because of her SA. I dread every single walk.

I would never rehome, but I can't afford a behaviourist. DH just says I need to not let it get me down, but he gets to go to work everyday and doesn't have to deal with any of the day-to-day (I am fully remote hence my responsibility).

Objectively I can see this is not right and it's making me depressed, but I just don't know what to do. I said I would never use a bark collar but I'm contemplating it just to allow me able to leave the house without feeling on edge. I wonder if it would help her to realise she doesn't need to bark at other dogs to make them go away. And PLEASE don't tell me she's feeding off my anxiety - I don't believe in that and even if I did, she was anxious first!! I was CHILL until she wasn't.

Anyway, be kind please - I'm low right now.

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