One Year on Meds: Recheck with the Veterinary Behaviorist

So Maisy's been on meds for a bit over a year now. The difference between the way she was then and the way she is now is nothing short of miraculous to me. Of course, it's not a miracle at all, it's simply the fact that the biochemistry in her brain is not correct, and the addition of paroxetine makes it so. Whatever. The point is, medication has made such a huge impact on our lives that I am absolutely awestruck when I think about it- like when we have an appointment with our veterinary behaviorist, Dr. Duxbury.

Our appointment this time around was actually pretty short and sweet. We didn't discuss behavior logs (although I took them, and I'll share them here today), and we only watched one video. We talked about what daily life is like now- uneventful, really, but that's a good thing in this case. We also talked about some of the challenges we still face- children, mostly, as well as our disastrous (if you're a chicken, anyway) Thanksgiving. But really we just admired how well Maisy is doing.

Here's a link to the behavior logs/charts from a year ago. At baseline, before medication, she was averaging 3.58 incidents (defined as overreacting to unnoticeable or mild stimuli when at home) per day. About a third of these happened during the night, and frequently woke me up. It was not uncommon for these incidents to include prolonged scanning of the environment/general vigilance, up to and including leaving the room to investigate. After six weeks on medication, this was down to 1.33 incidents per day.

Although this was a great improvement, we decided to increase Maisy's medication slightly. I took another set of behavior logs (link here), and after eight weeks at the new dose, we were down to 1 incident a day, on average.

Things have improved since then, and honestly, it's not even worth making a chart. I kept logs for seven days. Over the course of six of these days, I saw a grand total of three incidents, which makes for an average of 0.5 incidents per day. It involved stuff like “Maisy was lying in my lap while we were watching Star Trek. She heard a car go by with loud bass. She lifted her head and growled.” No vigilance, low intensity, and just all around typical dog behavior.

That seventh day, though? Was awful. She had four incidents that day, mostly because my husband was wrong about everything and forced me to yell at him. Okay, not really, but for some reason we were just really crabby with each other that day, and I was amazed by the impact it had on Maisy. Including the seventh day, her logs shoot up to an average of 1 incident a day. Marital bliss is good for more than just the people involved, I guess.

I also took logs after we got home from Thanksgiving. Every year, we spend five days at my parents' house in South Dakota. It's a significant disruption to her routine, there are tons of cats and dogs and horses and chickens, and it's just hard on her. I also took logs last year after we got home, which means I can compare how she recovered both times:

Her stress recovery period actually took longer than I expected, although it's still an improvement over last year.

The coolest thing about all this doesn't come from the numbers, but rather from her general behavior. The video below was taken back in October. I had left work early to do some much needed yard work. It was a very windy day (that white thing you'll see bouncing around is a styrofoam cooler lid), and across the street you can just barely make out approximately 50 elementary school-aged children playing during recess. And through it all, she did this:



Maisy's behavior was not in any way cued or encouraged by me. She chose to lie down. As Dr. Duxbury noted, Maisy's acting like a normal dog. Who knew she had it in her?

Miraculous or not, both Dr. Duxbury and I are quite pleased with Maisy's progress. In fact, the sum total of Dr. Duxbury's advice to me was to continue to be alert to both the environment and Maisy's body language, and to remove her from situations where she might be triggered, but before she reacts. I think I can do that.

Recheck with the Veterinary Behaviorist: Behavior Logs

It seems hard to believe that Maisy has been on medication for eight months now. Sometimes it feels like just yesterday that we started this journey, and at others, it feels like it was a lifetime ago. On Monday, we had Maisy's six-month recheck with her veterinary behaviorist, and once again, I must take this opportunity to highly recommend Dr. Duxbury at the University of Minnesota Behavior Department. As always, I absolutely adored working with her. She's full of great insight and is absolutely masterful at reading body language. She has tons of experience, which leaves me feeling very comfortable with her recommendations. And it doesn't hurt that I really like her.

Anyway, I have so much that I want to share about Maisy's progress, about Dr. Duxbury's reactions, and about what the future holds that this will probably take multiple posts. Today's entry will take a look at the behavior logs I kept in the past couple of weeks. (Click here to see past behavior logs.)

Usually, I keep a week or two of logs to get an idea of how Maisy is doing. Her pre-medication baseline was 3-4 anxiety episodes per day, so I was pretty excited to see how she was doing. This set of behavior logs were different, though. You see, right before I planned to start keeping the logs, Maisy ended up in the doggie ER. She then had two back-to-back appointments with a specialist, which she found incredibly stressful. I kept logs anyway knowing that they wouldn't be an accurate representation of how she's doing in general, but feeling like it was my duty. Then I remembered that I have logs from the last time she had a stressful event (five days at my parents' house at Thanksgiving), so I laid them out side by side (click the image to enlarge it):

As you can see, I have data from the day of the stressful event (in both cases, I started keeping logs in the late afternoon), as well as for the subsequent week. The initial response is the same: 3 instances of anxiety vocalizations or startles on the day of the stressful event. And, I'd say that her recovery time is about the same for both sets of data- three full days after the stressful event, although I'd definitely say there was residual stress for a couple days beyond that both times. 

I have to admit, I was a bit disappointed by this. One of my goals was really for Maisy to bounce back quicker after a stressful event, and that has not happened. In fact, now I'm not sure it can happen; I don't know that it's possible to hurry stress hormones out of the body.

However, I am thrilled by how much better she's doing in handling the stress. I mean, check out that graph! The red lines are so much lower than the blue lines! Before, over the full seven-day period, she had an average of 2.86 instances of anxiety per day. Now, that's just 1.14. Before, over the three-day primary recovery period, she had an average of 4 instances per day, and now it's only 2 per day. More than that, the quality of those anxious outbursts has changed. The intensity and duration have gone way down.

So, even though these aren't exactly conventional behavior logs, they are incredibly interesting, and I'm quite happy with Maisy's progress. I absolutely love what Paxil has done for Maisy's quality of life. Of course, now the question is... did Dr. Duxbury agree that the Paxil has been helpful? Was she as impressed by the results of our logs? I'll let you know in my next post...

Medication Update: 6 months

Maisy has now been on medication for six months- long enough that some days I take it for granted. In many ways, I've gotten used to the New Maisy. The simple act of sleeping no longer astonishes me the way it once did, and even her new found bravery seems less remarkable. For example, this morning in shaping class, she went over a full-height dogwalk. Then she turned around and did it again. And again. And again. She was careful, but she was somehow confident in her caution. To me, this seemed almost normal. To our trainer, it was nothing short of amazing.

I took behavior logs again last week. Maisy was, to be honest, a bit edgier around the house than usual; in two days she had three incidents... if you can call them that. Is it fair to call a soft “wuffing” noise an incident?

The first was probably the worst: She was lounging in the kitchen. I'm not sure what she heard, but she suddenly came trotting into the living room towards the front door, making a series of small wuffs. The whole thing lasted maybe 30 seconds.

The second was quite remarkable: We were both in the living room, and there was a banging noise coming from the back door. She stood, wuffed once, took a few steps towards the noise, and then stopped and looked at me! Instead of flying out of the room, roo-roo-rooing like she would have in the past, she just looked to me for guidance, and when I told her it was fine, she laid back down. Wow. Just... wow.

The last was almost nothing: My husband came home, and when Maisy heard the door open, she looked up, uttered a single wuff, and then fell silent.

All three of these incidents truly demonstrate how much she's changed. She isn't barking and growling and pacing for minutes on end anymore. She's just making barely audible vocalizations; hardly anything to be concerned about. In fact, I imagine they are quite normal. Dogs do bark after all.

What's more telling, though, is the stimuli that she isn't reacting to. Over the past week, spring has really, truly come to Minnesota, and with it, people are spending time outside. I've heard kids shrieking and laughing outside our windows. I've heard dirt bikes racing up and down our alley. I've heard laughter and music and parties. And Maisy has heard it, too. But she isn't overreacting to it. She barely seems to notice it.

Despite everything, I'm still moving slowly with her. There is no need to rush back into competition. I was telling a friend yesterday that I don't plan to be back in the rally ring for another year. Could she do it sooner? Probably. She could probably enter and do well in the trial next weekend. But this new-found sanity of ours is still tentative. It's solid enough that I sometimes forget what she was like, but it's not solid enough that I don't worry it could all be lost.

So, while I don't want to forget how far she's come, neither do I want to dwell on it. Instead, I want to focus on who she is now. Yes, Maisy has made tremendous improvements. No, she's not the same dog. And that's great- it truly is- but it doesn't tell me who she's becoming. I want to take the time to learn her new limits for stress, her new coping skills, her new bounce-back time. I want to know her as she is now, not in context of how she was, but in context of where we're going. Although I have no idea where that might be, I'm looking forward to making that journey with her, wherever it leads us, because in the end, we'll be together.

And that's all that I've ever wanted.

Medication Update: 5 months

It’s been five months since Maisy first started taking paroxetine (Paxil), and three months since we increased the dose. So how is she doing? Absolutely fabulous. I took behavior logs for two days this week… if you can call it that. I didn’t actually write anything down! She might have vocalized a slight wuff at one point, but I wasn’t sure- it was so quiet that I couldn’t tell if she was sighing or wuffing. This isn’t to say that she doesn’t have any outbursts at all anymore- she does- but they are far less frequent, and they don’t have the same anxious, overly-vigilant quality any more.

In addition to relaxing at home, she’s relaxing while out and about. You’ll remember, of course, that she was able to relax in class recently, and we’ve started working on going back to trials, too. There’s more work to be done there, but I’m feeling pretty confident about it since the behavior modification work I’ve done around dudes seems to be paying off.

I’m also happy to report that she’s finally earned working privileges in her Tuesday night reactive dog class. We started working on being calm in her crate during class awhile back, and the deal was that she would spend classes in her crate until she could go the full hour in a covered without vocalizing or snarking at the other dogs. For a long time, she had only one little outburst per class, usually towards the end. Honestly, I was beginning to wonder if she’d ever make it out of that crate! But this week she spent the whole class in her crate calmly. In fact, as we first arrived, she was really excited to say hi to the Scary Doberman (Maisy hates large, dark-colored dogs with prick ears). This is huge progress for her.

Overall, I'm really glad that I chose to put Maisy on medication. I get the occasional email from readers asking about our experiences. Am I glad I did it? Do I regret it at all? And perhaps the most common concern: did her personality change? This last question makes so much sense to me- after all, I loved Maisy just as she was before I put her on medication. I didn’t want her drugged, I just wanted her normal.

If the medication has changed her personality, it’s only because it has allowed her personality to shine through even stronger. She is so much more relaxed, confident and outgoing. I really feel like the anxiety was altering her personality by preventing its full expression. Indeed, the medication is allowing her to grow into her true self. She’s the same dog, but better, and I am so grateful for it. My only regret is that I didn't do it sooner.

Medication Update: 8 weeks at 10mg

Maisy has now been on the increased dose of paroxetine for 8 weeks, which means that it should be at its full effectiveness. At our recheck appointment with the veterinary behaviorist, Dr. Duxbury commented that the level of improvement Maisy had shown would probably be enough for most people. I, being greedy, wanted more, which is why we increased the medication. I am glad we did, because I’m thrilled with the additional improvement I’ve seen in Maisy.

As you may remember, before beginning the medication, Maisy was averaging 3.58 incidents per day in which she would startle, bark, or growl at mild or undetectable stimuli. About a third of these would happen overnight, waking us both up. These behaviors were pretty intense: approximately 1 in 4 lasted longer than a minute, and she would scan the environment and/or or leave the room to look for the trigger roughly 1 in every 3 times.

After seven weeks on the 8mg dosage, she was averaging 2 incidents per day, and thankfully, the number at night had reduced dramatically, happening roughly 1 time out of 10. Similarly, the duration of her behaviors shortened, and she wasn’t showing any vigilance. You can see the logs for the first two months of medication here.

Now? Well, at 8 weeks on the new dose, she’s averaging 1 incident per day, although it’s honestly hard to label some of them as incidents. For example, on Sunday, she simply looked up and softly “wuffed.” I wrote it down to be consistent, but that sort of thing doesn’t concern me in the least. The average duration of her behaviors is 5.7 seconds, which shows that her vigilance has greatly reduced, and that she recovers quickly. And the absolute best thing? She isn’t waking me up at night anymore.

Here’s the chart for the last two months (click to embiggen):


As you can see, it’s been up and down. She actually did the best at four weeks, with a rough spot at six weeks. I saw a similar trend the first time around, and I’m beginning to wonder if this is just a normal reaction to SSRIs. At any rate, it's clear that the increased dose has had positive behavioral effects.

These effects have carried over to Maisy’s behavior outside our house, as well. Recently, I took Maisy to a pet store on a Saturday afternoon, and it was fairly busy inside. There were rude dogs, men in funny hats and unpredictable children, and yet she handled herself well. In the 45 minutes that we were there, she only had one outburst, a very quick bark at a large golden on a flexi, literally dragging a child wearing clompy boots down the aisle towards us. I can hardly blame her for her reaction! I think the best thing about the visit, though, was that I wasn’t actively managing her. I wasn’t requesting behaviors or shoving treats in her mouth, which is a huge change from how it used to be.

Needless to say, I’m thrilled. After consulting with Dr. Duxbury, we agreed to keep Maisy on this dose. Going forward, I’ll take behavior logs once a month, and then return for a follow-up appointment in June.

Even more exciting… Dr. Duxbury said I could work towards getting Maisy ready for trials again! I've been given orders to take things very slow, so I will be very purposeful about the level of stimulation I expose her to. I am working on a training plan to follow so that I don’t accidentally push Maisy too hard, and I’ll share it with you all soon. If there’s anyone with experience with this, I’d love to hear what you did.

For now, I just want to say that I’m so grateful for the knowledge and experience that Dr. Duxbury has shared with me, the support I’ve gotten from you all, and best of all, my newly relaxed dog. It’s been a crazy journey, but it’s been worth it!

Medication Update: 6 weeks at 10mg

Maisy has now been on the increased dose of paroxetine for 6 weeks. After the awesome logs two weeks ago, the behavior logs this week didn’t look so good. I did three days of logs, and Maisy had a total of 10 incidents where she seemed to overreact to small or undetectable stimuli, for an average of 3.3 per day. Just two weeks ago, she’d had only one incident in three days.

When I wrote Dr. Duxbury, Maisy’s veterinary behaviorist, after the first two days to let her know, I theorized that the disappointing results might have been due to the fact that I’d slacked off on my behavior modification work. Dr. Duxbury agreed that was a possibility, but also added that sometimes dogs get a bit quieter after starting a new med or dosage, and perhaps that's why the logs looked so good last time. She also said that dogs often cycle through “good” times and “bad” ones, which certainly seems possible. When I went back through the previous posts I’ve made on Maisy’s progress, I saw that the numbers do fluctuate from week to week.

Personally, I prefer my explanation, not because I don’t value Dr. Duxbury’s expertise (I do!), but because mine seems the easiest to control! I don't like it when I can't fix things, and my theory lends itself best to action. So, I decided to test my theory. After I took those two days of logs, I spent the next 24 hours diligently tossing treats as part of our counter-conditioning plan. Then I took another day’s worth of data. The end result didn't exactly prove me right, but it suggested that my theory has merit.

The first two days of logs showed an average of four incidents per day. The last one showed an average of two. The duration of each behavior also dropped, from an average of 9.6 seconds to 3.0 seconds. And, while she both left the room and displayed signs of vigilance 25% of the time during the first two days, she didn’t do either during the last day. Obviously, I can’t draw any firm conclusions from such a limited amount of data, but it’s enough to convince me: medication is more effective when combined with behavior modification.

Despite the worsening numbers, the overall trend remains positive. Maisy is sleeping well. She relaxes around the house and no longer needs constant interaction. She recovers quickly, and overall, the intensity of her reactions is way down. And hey- she’s no longer waking me up in the middle of the night! I am really, really happy that we chose to give her medication. It wasn't an easy decision, but it was clearly the right one.

How, When and Why to Keep Behavior Logs for Your Dog

When I scheduled Maisy’s first appointment with the veterinary behaviorist, they asked me to do a number of things, but the hardest was keeping behavior logs. I had a vague idea of how to go about it, but wasn’t really sure what to include. As it turns out, I’m not alone. An internet search doesn’t turn up much useful information, and I’ve had several emails asking about my experiences with them lately. Today, I thought I’d answer the most common questions.

Who should keep a behavior log?
Behavior logs are amazing. I’ve learned a lot about my dog through them, and I think that more people should be using them. Anyone whose dog is reactive, anxious, fearful, shy, aggressive, resource guarding, or otherwise labeled in some way, should be keeping logs. If you are worried about what you’re seeing, but aren’t sure if it’s an issue, you should be keeping behavior logs. If you’ve decided to see a trainer or a veterinarian to discuss your concerns, you should definitely be keeping logs.

Why are they so important?
Behavior logs can help you see the scope and severity of a problem. I knew Maisy was wound tighter than normal dogs, but the behavior logs were incredibly eye-opening. I had no idea she slept as little as she did, and I certainly didn’t remember the fact that she was regularly waking me up in the middle of the night.

Behavior logs can also demonstrate your concerns to a professional in a clear, objective way. Before we consulted with the vet behaviorist, I tried to discuss Maisy’s issues with her vet. Unfortunately, because dogs are often nervous at the vet’s office, Maisy didn’t seem that bad. If I would have had data to show what she was like at home, it’s possible that her issues may have been taken more seriously.

Finally, behavior logs provide you with a baseline that will allow you to look back and measure progress over time. Done regularly, they can show both improvement and regression. It is much easier and quicker to troubleshoot a treatment plan if you catch the relapse early.

What should I write down?
In the broad sense, you should keep track of anything that you’re concerned about or that seems unusual, but be sure you’re tracking behaviors, not interpretations. For example, I started keeping logs because I thought Maisy was “anxious,” but to prove that I needed to document what Maisy was doing that led me to that assumption.

I also think tracking the flip-side can be helpful: keep track of how often or how long your dog engages in normal or desirable behaviors. Sometimes, the fact that there is so little normal tells you more than the fact that there is so much weird.

With that said, let’s talk about the specifics you should include. I’m firmly in the “the more, the better” camp. If you have too much data, you can discard the extra, but you can never go back and fill in what’s missing. Still, I know not everyone is as detailed as I am, so at the very least, your logs should include the date and time, what triggered the behavior, and how your dog responded.

For the triggering stimulus, you’re recording what caused your dog’s behavior. Of course, sometimes you just won’t know- and that’s okay. You can make your best guess (just be sure that you notate it as such), or you can write “unknown.” When you’re pretty sure of the cause, I’m in favor of lots of information- you never know which detail might be important. For example, Maisy doesn’t care for dogs with prick ears, which seems like a relatively small detail to me, but it’s huge to her. Simply writing “a dog walked by” won’t get at that as well as “a Doberman walked by.”

It can also be helpful to record what was going on before the trigger happened. Include information such as location, your dog’s activities, who was nearby, and what they were doing. For bonus points, go back even further and try to remember if anything stressful or out of the ordinary occurred earlier in the day, or maybe even the day before. Triggers “stack” for many dogs, and including earlier stressors in your logs can help you figure out which combinations- if any- provoke a response in your dog.

When describing a behavior, you want to do just that- describe it- and you want to avoid interpreting the behavior. Record your dog’s body language, vocalizations, movement, etc. Try to be very objective, so that someone who wasn’t there could understand exactly what your dog did. For example, instead of “Dog barked a lot,” describe the pitch or volume. Clarify what “a lot” is, too, either by counting the number of barks or estimating how long the barking continued. Was the behavior sustained, or did the dog interrupt himself before resuming the behavior? Be as clear as possible.

Once the behavior is over, include how long it takes your dog to either return to his previous activity or to calm down. Knowing your dog’s recovery period can be critical information to have, especially when you’re considering medication. In fact, I really wish I’d done a better job tracking this with Maisy. I think her ability to bounce back has improved tremendously, but unfortunately, I can’t prove it.

That’s a lot of work! How can I easily track all that?
At this point, if you’re thinking that this is a lot of work… well, you’re right, it can be. My best advice is to make it easy on yourself. I initially tried making charts and graphs to fill in, because I like that kind of thing, but I found them frustrating to use. Eventually, I settled on just jotting notes down on a piece of notebook paper, although sometimes I email it to myself instead.

However, even with a simple tracking system, it can be pretty time-consuming to keep track of what’s going on, especially if you discover that your dog’s behavior is happening more often than you realized. I learned early on that Maisy “dive bombs” the cats a lot, and quickly gave up tracking those because it was so overwhelming. Instead, what I should have done was just count how often it happened, even if I wasn’t including all the details.

Of course, the details can be important, too, so if you choose to keep tallies, I recommend doing time interval recordings to supplement your data. You can choose the intervals that work for you, but whether you observe and record data for 10 minutes every hour, an hour every day, or even one day out of the week, it will help provide you with a clearer picture. After all, while you’ll get the most out of a more complete log, some data is still better than no data.

Now that I’ve got all this information, what do I do with it?
That’s up to you. I had a lot of fun looking for patterns and creating statistics, and it made it much easier to track Maisy’s progress, too. The basic approach requires you to figure out the average number of incidents per day and the average duration of a behavior. However, you might also look at the time of day, types of triggers, or correlation between certain people and events and the behavior. Look to see what types of things are repeated- those are your training opportunities. When I did this with my own logs, I discovered that Maisy has a lot of trouble with door-related noises, so I’ve included that in my behavior modification plan for her.


Okay, I know that was a lot of information, but I wanted to make sure I gave this topic the attention it deserved. Of course, the chances are good that I missed something, so feel free to comment with any questions you might have! If you’ve kept logs in the past, I’d love to hear about the way you structured them, what you wish you would have included, what was the most helpful, and what you learned. If you decide to keep logs because of this post, I’d be very interested to hear what you learn, and whether or not you thought it was worth your time. Good luck guys, and happy behavior logging!

Medication Update: 4 weeks at 10mg

I love Paxil.

That’s what I told Maisy’s veterinary behaviorist when I updated her on Maisy’s progress. Needless to say, the report was absolutely glowing. You guys, I love Paxil.

As a reminder, at baseline, Maisy was having an average of 3.58 incidents a day in which she barked, growled or startled at undetectable or minimal stimuli. It wasn’t uncommon for those incidents to last longer than a minute. She would trot around the house vigilantly, scanning the environment, looking for… something. After two weeks on paroxetine, that had reduced to 2.5 per day. At four weeks, it was 2.67. At six weeks, 1.33. At seven weeks, it was up again to 2. Then we increased Maisy’s dosage from 8mg to 10mg, and after two weeks, she was having an average of 2.5 incidents per day.

I took three days worth of behavior logs this week. Guess how many incidents she had. No, go on, guess. I’ll wait…Okay, are you ready?

She had one.

Not per day. One. Total. For three whole days. And the incident was pretty minor at that. I’m not entirely sure what happened, as I wasn’t in the same room with her, but I heard her bark twice. The barks were somewhere between an alert bark and a play bark, and when I went to check on her, she was sitting in the living room, wagging her tail, and looking through French door at her cat, Malcolm. Malcolm was next to the front door, and if I had to guess, he probably made some small noise that startled her. There was no vigilance. She didn’t leave the room, and the incident wasn’t long and drawn out. She just barked. And that was it. That’s all that happened in the last three days.

At Maisy’s re-check appointment a month ago, I told Dr. Duxbury that I was hoping to reduce the number of incidents from 2 to 3 per day down to 2 to 3 per week. I guess we made it.

I love Paxil.

But that’s not all the good news. For instance, Maisy continues to sleep. In fact, this weekend, I emailed my friends to ask how much their dogs sleep, because Maisy is now averaging 17 to 18 hours of sleep per day. (For the record, this was pretty much right on with what their dogs do.) Whereas she used to pace, harass the cats, or incessantly drop a tennis ball in my lab, now she tends to simply curl up next to me and snooze.

Along those same lines, the other day Maisy was doing just that, and when I got up and left the room, she didn’t follow me. This has never happened before. She has always followed me, even if I was just moving a few feet away. Not that I minded, of course, but I always felt bad that she would jump up as if startled just because I moved. I actually love that this time, she just sleepily watched me walk away.

Another first happened when my husband came home late (think 2 am) one night. Usually, this causes an explosion of barking and growling, but she didn’t make a peep that night. She woke up, and she was excited to see him, but she was quiet. (While I count this as a success, I have to admit, I never really minded that she was so loud when someone entered the house late at night.)

She’s doing great in class, too. In our shaping class on Sunday, there were two new dogs present, and Maisy was initially a bit stressed as a result. Then I realized that I had fallen back into my old habits of trying to shovel treats in her mouth as quickly as possible. When I realized what I was doing, I remembered Dr. Duxbury’s advice to take slow down when I’m working with her. Immediately, Maisy relaxed. Wow!

Tuesday night in reactive dog class, Stella, the bouvier that Maisy always reacts to, was back in class after an eight week hiatus. I wasn’t sure how it would go, but Maisy silently watched Stella from her crate, jumping up only once. Later on, she barked at Stella as she left, but she settled down pretty quickly. So, while she wasn’t perfect, she was pretty darn good!

In fact, she’s been so good that Dr. Duxbury wanted me to confirm that Maisy is still energetic and playful at appropriate times. And she is. She loves her walks, chases her ball enthusiastically, is eager to train with me, and still gets the nightly zoomies. Her personality hasn’t changed at all. She’s just more comfortable.

Have I mentioned that I love Paxil? Because I totally do.

Medication Update: 2 weeks at 10mg

Maisy sleeping at my parents' house.
I still can't get over it.

Maisy has been on her increased dose of paroxetine for two weeks now. At her re-check appointment, I was told to expect basically the same process as before: side effects possible in the first two weeks, with full effectiveness at six to eight weeks. Thankfully, on the former point, she’s been just fine- no side effects. On the latter, well, I come bearing behavior logs! (If you want to look at the last data set, it’s available here.)

First, and most importantly, the intensity and duration of Maisy’s anxiety-related behaviors around the house continues to decrease. I have three objective factors that I’ve used to measure this: First, did she leave the room? At baseline, she left the room 35% of the time. At both seven weeks and this week, she didn’t. Second, did she scan the environment during the behavior? At baseline, 30% of her behaviors included elements of vigilance. Again, at both seven weeks and this week, that had dropped to 0%. And third, did the behavior last longer than one minute? At baseline, 23% of the behaviors did. At seven weeks, 13% did. This week, none did. In fact, the average duration was just 9.3 seconds!

Subjectively, I’ve also felt that the intensity of her behaviors have reduced. In fact, I’ve started to have trouble defining the vocalization type. Her barks have been very soft, and almost “wuffy” in character. Interestingly frequency of each type of vocalization is more or less the same as it has been in the past: none were silent, 40% were a wuff only, 10% were a growl only, 30% were a bark only, and 20% included multiple vocalization types. However, this does represent a reduction in multiple vocalization types, which does support the idea that the intensity has reduced.

On average, she is having slightly more incidents per day now (2.5) than she did two weeks ago (2). Still, they have reduced from the baseline (3.58). Also, during her first two weeks on medication, she had a few oddities like this, so I’m not too worried. Given the incredible reduction in intensity, as well as the low duration of behavior, I’m very pleased with the current results.

I’m also very excited because only one behavior (10%) occurred during the middle of the night. In fact, there was one night where I was woken up by a large thump, and Maisy looked at me like I was crazy to be awake. At baseline, 35% of her outbursts happened at night. Needless to say, I’m sleeping much, much better these days.

That said, I have noticed a few interesting things. First, only one of the responses was what I’d label “reasonable,” and that happened when Brian came home fairly late at night. I’m really okay with her barking at people walking in the house after 10pm. However, the door does seem to serve as a source of anxiety: during half of all her behaviors, she looked at the door, I will have to start doing some desensitization around them.

Even more interestingly, food was involved a whopping 70% of the time. In half of all the behaviors logged this time, I was eating a snack, and Maisy was (politely) begging. Each time, a small noise caused her to vocalize, even though the exact same noise caused no reaction either prior to or after snack time. These instances did not appear to be resource guarding (she usually rushes at or snaps at the offending cat when it is). The remaining food-related anxiety behaviors happened while she was eating supper. In both of those, she was in a different room than I was, so it is possible those were resource guarding. Still, I don’t think they were based on the location of the cats at that time.

In terms of reactivity, I think she’s doing better overall. However, we have had a few incidents recently. The most troubling was The Dude Incident. After our recent snowstorm, Maisy and I were shoveling out our garage. Maisy was off leash, and we were playing the game in the alley. Occasionally she greeted a neighbor with enthusiasm, but when a man came walking down the alley, she lost her mind. Now, this, in and of itself, is not remarkable. In the past, a similar situation might have caused her to rush towards the scary thing/person, stop about five to ten feet away, and bark and growl. This time, she began circling the man, nipping at him (but never making contact) while growling and barking, somewhat like an overaroused herding dog might.

I’m not sure what to think. She’s never gotten close before, so why now? Has the medicine helped her feel brave enough to face her fears? And if so… is that a good thing? Frankly, I’ve been hoping that this is just a weird side-effect thing (she did something similar during her first two weeks on paroxetine, though she didn’t get as close), but realistically, I know it’s probably an issue. My trainer and I are working on setting up some training opportunities with men so that I can properly do the necessary desensitization and counter-conditioning. Needless to say, in the meantime she won’t be allowed off-leash.

The only other reactivity has been more understandable. In class on Sunday, she lunged at her greyhound friend, Beckett when he was wearing a coat, and at Beckett’s mom when she was carrying some jump standards. Both of those things are weird enough to cause her some anxiety. She did not, however, lunge at the two new dogs in class. In Tuesday night class, the only time she made a peep was when a child clomped through the area wearing snow boots. Once she saw the child, she was fine (and in fact, just about exploded with excitement because she really likes this particular kid), but the noise put her on edge.

Overall, I’m still very happy that I put Maisy on the paroxetine. I’m excited to see the changes over the coming weeks- I have a hunch that this is the right dose for her, but only time will tell.

Update: This afternoon, I emailed our veterinary behaviorist with the raw data logs and a short summary of how things are going. She responded very quickly, saying that she agreed with my theory regarding Maisy's Dude Issue, adding that this is why she worries about vets prescribing meds without discussing behavior mod to accompany them.

She also said that she thinks the increased anxiety around the cats may be an extension of her resource guarding. Her theory is that Maisy knows the cats are still in the house, and knows that they could suddenly appear even when they aren't nearby. As a result, she listens more closely to the noises around the house, and reacts to them a bit quicker. After she told me that, I looked at the logs again, and found that roughly three-fourths of her food-related anxiety behaviors were provoked by noises the cats made in the other room. (I didn't know the cause of the remaining quarter.)

I just have to say, her continued support between appointments is incredibly helpful, and I cannot recommend her enough. Seriously, if you live in Minnesota and need a veterinary behaviorist, you should see Dr. Duxbury.

Re-check with the Veterinary Behaviorist

Maisy had her eight week re-check with Dr. Duxbury, her board-certified veterinary behaviorist, on Monday. This appointment lasted longer than I expected- almost two hours- and we reviewed the behavior logs and the charting that I had done. We also discussed my general observations, as well as my goals and hopes for Maisy. I guess I still don’t know if Maisy’s response has been “typical,” but Dr. Duxbury did say that for most people, the level of improvement we’ve seen in Maisy is “enough.”

I don’t want to undermine Maisy’s progress- it’s been phenomenal, and I’m thrilled. In fact, Maisy was incredible in the exam room yesterday. At our first appointment, Maisy alternately paced and sought out interaction. She settled only when I asked her to, and it was very clearly an operant behavior, not a truly relaxed one.

This time around, Maisy was much calmer. She spent most of the time on her mat, and she had a very soft, heavy-lidded look to her eyes. Incidentally, I’ve heard people talk about this look on email lists before, but never really understood what they meant. Now I do, and I must have pointed it out to Dr. Duxbury half a dozen times because I was so amazed. Although she did get up from time to time, her body movements were soft and fluid instead of quick and frantic. She wasn’t pacing so much as she was bored. She was truly a different dog. Dr. Duxbury even said that she wished she’d taken video at Maisy’s initial consult!

With that said, I want more progress. Maybe that makes me greedy, I don’t know, but like Dr. Duxbury said, we won’t know how much more is possible without trying. She certainly didn’t seem to think I was being unreasonable, and I completely trust that she would say something if I was.

We discussed my goals for Maisy. Dr. Duxbury wasn’t surprised that Maisy had a hard time when we were at my parent’s house, but she was a bit concerned by how long it took Maisy to recover. (I actually feel like a three to four day recovery period is a big improvement for her, but I don’t have any data to back that up.) We agreed that a short-acting, as needed medication is probably in Maisy’s best interest. We discussed both trazodone, which is a serotonin modulator, and alprazolam (Xanax), which is a benzodiazepine. Since we don’t have any big events planned for several months, we decided to wait until we’ve decided what to do with her routine meds.

Because I want to see the number of anxiety-provoked reactions around the house reduced from the current average of two per day to something like three or four per week, we agreed to increase Maisy’s paroxetine. Currently, she’s on 8mg (1mg/kilo of body weight), and we decided to increase it to 10mg (1.25mg/kilo). I will continue to keep intermittent behavior logs, and we’ll consult again in four to six weeks. At that time, we’ll discuss increasing to a max of 12mg (1.5mg/kilo) and/or adding a second medication (probably clonidine, a centrally acting alpha-agonist).

Speaking of behavior logs, I totally got a gold star. I’m glad they were useful, because they are an awful lot of work. Honestly, I’m not looking forward to doing more of them, but I can’t deny their importance. Dr. Duxbury’s student analyzed them for patterns (she thought maybe Maisy was having a series of lower-intensity behaviors that culminated in a high-intensity one, but that theory didn’t pan out). We also discussed the fact that some of the stimuli that Maisy is reacting to is reasonable- for example, someone at the door- while some of it isn’t. My new task is to start coding my logs in an effort to pinpoint which type of stimulus is causing most of her reactions.

I will also start doing some desensitization and counter-conditioning around the house. I decided to focus primarily on interactions with the cats, mostly in an effort to help reduce the stress in their lives, too. Dr. Duxbury also recommended giving a treat when Maisy startles but doesn’t go over the top. Obviously, being consistent with this will yield the best results, so I’m going to have to pay close attention to what’s going on. I will also need to have treats close by, which may result in my being mugged for a few days. This could be interesting!

Like I said, it was a great appointment, and I was absolutely thrilled with the professionalism, respect and attention we received. Seriously, if anyone in the area needs a vet behaviorist, I can’t recommend Dr. Duxbury enough.

Behavior Logs- Chart

Because I'm a geek, I made a spreadsheet summarizing the behavior logs I've been keeping on Maisy. Because some of you are geeks, I'm sharing it. Click the picture to embiggen so you can read it.


First, it has to be said: I know that the data isn't perfect. Taking data for only two days may or may not be accurate. Also, the categories in the chart above are completely arbitrary (and also retrospective); when I first started keeping the logs, I had no idea what to look for. For example, since I didn't know eight weeks ago that I'd be interested in the duration of each behavior, I didn't write down start and stop times. Still, my logs were fairly detailed, so I think the data in the chart is close, although not perfect.

Also, you'll see that there are two columns for seven weeks. The first is the first four days after we arrived home from Thanksgiving. I've written before that Maisy has a fairly long stress recovery period, and that was evident here. The second column reflects the data after she seemed to have recovered, although it's possible that there were still some residual stress hormones in her body.

With that said, here are my thoughts. Feel free to chime in with your own.

Number of Incidents
Overall, the trend is downwards, although she was actually above the baseline during the stress recovery period. She's still having approximately two incidents per day where she startles or overreacts to minor or undetectable stimuli in the environment. This number is higher than I'd like, and although I'm not sure what's reasonable to expect, I'd like to see it at more like 3-4 times a week.

Time of Day
I included this because a third of all the incidents during the baseline happened overnight. The number has gone down significantly, which I hope indicates she's sleeping sounder.

Vocalization Type
I'm really not sure what to make of the data here. About the only conclusion I can draw is that she growls less and, at least while recovering from stress, barking more. Possibly more of her incidents are silent, although the last column sort of undermines that conclusion.

Duration
As I already noted, I didn't track duration, although my notes were pretty good. The number of incidents lasting longer than one minute have been reduced by approximately half.

Leaving the Room and Vigilance
These two categories are very similar. Any time an incident included a notation about scanning the environment, I counted it as "vigilance." This has dropped off dramatically, from 30% of all incidents to 0%. (And only 7% during the recovery period!) This is a huge improvement! Leaving the room is probably related to vigilance, but often, I couldn't see what she was doing when she went to a different room, so I listed it in a separate category. The data shows that she's leaving the room far less often, contributing to my conclusion that she's less vigilant these days.

Intensity
This is a completely subjective measure, and retrospective, so take it with a grain of salt. Basically, if I read over a notation and thought it sounded worse than usual, I counted it as high intensity. This is probably the least accurate metric, and it also hasn't really changed. I'm not sure if that's because she's still having large explosions, or if it's because she's mellowed out so much that incidents that might have only been at a medium level during the baseline now seem high intensity to me.

Sample Notations
Baseline:
Maisy was napping. My stomach growled. Maisy jumped up, growled briefly, then trotted into the kitchen, looking around.

We were lying in bed, just on the verge of falling asleep. Maisy suddenly lifted her head and growled for approximately 20 seconds, then "wuffed" several times. She went into the kitchen, looked around for a moment, then ran towards the back door while barking.

Two Weeks:
We were in the kitchen, playing ball. The wind howled outside, and Maisy rushed toward the back door growling. Then she returned to me.

We were sitting on the couch together. I called out to Brian, who was in the other room. Maisy jumped up, startled, then lay down again.

Four Weeks:
We were sitting in the living room, and one of the cats were in the front room. Maisy made a single, soft "wuff."

We were in the living room on the couch. I accidentally "dinged" a glass, and Maisy barked, then trotted around the room for approximately 90 seconds, looking in both the kitchen and at the front door before settling down again.

Six Weeks:
Maisy and I were sitting together, and Brian giggled at something he read. Maisy jumped up, rushed towards Brian, and sat next to him.

Maisy was chewing on a rawhide, then suddenly stood, "wuffed" softly, and let out a short, low growl towards the front door.

Seven Weeks, Recovery Period:
Maisy was lying on the bedroom floor. Brian was in the other room, and when he shifted, his chair made a creaking sound. Maisy jumped up and let out a single bark.

Seven Weeks, Post-Recovery:
Maisy was eating out of a food-toy. I shifted my foot and it made a cracking noise. Maisy jumped up, and rushed approximately one foot away with her tail tucked. She barked three or four times as she did this, then looked around for about five seconds before she let out two small "wuffs."

Medication Update: 8 Week Re-Check

Maisy has a re-check appointment with Dr. Duxbury, her veterinary behaviorist, this week. We are going to evaluate her response to Paxil, the current dosage, and consider if an additional medication might be helpful. I’ve kind of been freaking out about this. I have no idea if Maisy’s response to the meds is typical; maybe the average dog is doing better (or worse) at this point. But I guess this is why I hired a professional, right?

There is much less preparation to be done this time around; no form to fill out and no videos to be taken. Because I’m a geek, I have been keeping behavior logs, although the behaviorist didn’t request them. Instead, I was told to be ready to share my general impressions of how Maisy’s doing, and the areas of continuing difficulty.

I find this incredibly overwhelming. I think she’s doing well, and I’m happy that I chose to put her on medication. But she’s not doing as well as I hoped, and I have no idea how much improvement is reasonable to expect. I don’t think Maisy will ever be “normal,” but how close can we get without overmedicating her?

After several days of panic, and many scribbled pages of notes, I realized that it would be easiest to think in terms of goals. How would I like to see Maisy behave? What do I want to see change? In the paperwork I filled out prior to her consult, I identified two goals: for Maisy to be able to relax, and (if possible) to be able to take her to trials again. Although I still have these goals, I’ve expanded on them so that I have a better idea of what I’m looking for. I’ve also prioritized them, because it’s far more important that she can relax at home than at a trial. I’ve listed these goals below, along with my comments on her progress.

1. Ability to relax at home. Specifically, I want Maisy to be able to hang out and/or take naps without startling over undetectable or minor environmental stimuli. Overall, she’s improved. Her vigilance has reduced, as well as frequency of outbursts. The outbursts are lower intensity and lower duration. She is less restless, and is choosing to nap instead of seek constant interactions with others. She is sleeping more often and more soundly, and is demonstrating increased impulse control around the cats.

2. Ability to settle in low-stimulation environments. If I take her to a friend or family member’s house, I’d like for her to feel comfortable enough to lie down and chill instead of pacing or wandering around. Although my parents thought Maisy did well at their house over Thanksgiving, and commented that she seemed calmer, I think that her vigilance and outbursts were on par with baseline data, or possibly even higher. (I wish I’d done behavior logs at their house.) Also, she paced the entire time we were at my grandparents’ house one afternoon, and couldn't settle, even when there were treats involved.

3. Ability to sleep in low-stimulation environments, especially for overnight trips to a family member’s house, but also at hotels. Maisy didn’t sleep the first night at my parents’ house, instead pacing most of the night, punctuated with barking outbursts. After about 12 hours, she seemed to get used to the environment, and was sleeping better than she had prior to medication (even at home), but not as well as she had been when I did the logs for the six-week update.

4. Ability to recover from stressful events within 24 to 48 hours. Maisy had an average of 3.75 outbursts a day for approximately four days after returning home from my parents’ house, at which point they reduced to the six-week levels, or maybe even a bit better. Despite the frequency of outbursts, 40% were silent (compared to 14% at baseline), which seems good. She was able to sleep (and absolutely crashed the night we got home), although not as well as she’d been doing prior to the trip.

5. Ability to go to trials without demonstrating reactivity. Bonus points if she can relax in her crate at a trial, or can do full days and/or multiple days. Obviously, we haven’t tried this yet. We’ll continue to wait and watch to see if it’s appropriate. It may not be, but I would really like to be able to do at least a single run at a small trial once or twice a year. That said, I do recognize that it’s not likely that she’ll ever be in it for the long haul.


Overall, while I’m pleased with Maisy’s progress, I’m hoping for more. I’m looking forward to discussing everything with Dr. Duxbury, and can't wait to tell you guys about the appointment. It's sure to be interesting!

Medication Update: 4 weeks

Maisy has now been on paroxetine for four weeks, three of which have been at the full dose of 8mg. When Maisy’s veterinary behaviorist prescribed it, she said it would take 4-6 weeks before we saw any results. Since I saw some improvement at two weeks, I was very excited to see what she’d be like at four weeks. So, for the last three days, I’ve been keeping behavior logs in order to get some objective data.

The data has been… interesting. I was expecting to see a decrease in the number of outbursts Maisy is having, but this has not happened. Prior to her appointment, Maisy would bark or growl at subtle or undetectable stimuli an average of 3.375 times a day. At two weeks, this had decreased to an average of 2 times a day. During this week’s behavior logs, Maisy’s average was 2.667 times a day.

Although this is a reduction from the baseline, I was still disappointed when I saw this. Of course, the numbers are the numbers, but I really felt like Maisy is doing better than she was, especially since it seems like Maisy isn’t as vigilant as she used to be. She might be vocalizing when something startles her, but she seems to settle down faster.

So, I went back to the original behavior logs. Although I hadn’t been scoring the intensity of her reactions, I had kept a fair amount of detail. During the basline period, Maisy’s outbursts included extended vigilance (defined as either trotting around the house scanning the room intently for at least ten seconds) 45% of the time. Two weeks ago, she demonstrated such vigilance 25% of the time. This time, she scored the same: 25%. Good.

Next, I did the restlessness test. This is where I settle down with Maisy and watch a TV program while she lies next to me. During the baseline, she lifted her head or got up 11 times in 45 minutes. Two weeks ago, the number was the same, but the amount of time she looked around had reduced greatly. This time was actually worse- 19 times. It really seemed like she was having a hard time settling down. I think this was because of when I did the observation. The first two times, I came home and immediately watched the show. Yesterday, we went for a three mile walk with friends first. I think the amount of activity immediately preceding the test affected the results. I’ll do it again in a couple of weeks and see what happens.

As for her reactivity, she’s doing well. Like I said, yesterday we went on a walk with friends. I was a bit concerned in the beginning when she rushed towards two dogs. However, she was quiet during those incidents, and frankly, I couldn’t tell if she was trying to scare them off, or if she wanted to go say hi. After that, she settled down nicely and passed other dogs, including large, dark, prick-eared dogs, without a problem.

We also had a milestone in her reactive dog class on Tuesday: It was the first time she went through an entire class without any incident. She’s come close before, with only one or two soft vocalizations during the hour, but this week, there were none. Now, granted, she was in a covered crate the entire time, but that’s never stopped her before. Even better, she was actually relaxed- she appeared to be resting instead of working for treats.

Finally, I should note that Maisy is not experiencing any side effects due to the medication. During the first three weeks, she had some harder stools than normal, but that has subsided over the past week.

Overall, I do think the medication is helping her. She’s tolerating well, and she seems more relaxed. The decrease in vigilance is pretty amazing. The medication will continue to build up in Maisy’s system, and full effectiveness should be seen between 6 and 8 weeks. Hopefully, Maisy continues to improve.

Medication Update: 2 Weeks

Maisy has been on paroxetine for two weeks now. She took a half dose for the first week, and has been on the full dose (8mg) for a week now. Since the prescribing information I received from the compounding pharmacy said that we may see results as early as 2 weeks, I thought it would be interesting to do a quick evaluation of how it’s going so far.

The most important thing is that Maisy has tolerated the paroxetine well. She hasn’t had any significant side effects, and at this point, it is unlikely that she will. She has had slightly harder, dryer stools, but nothing that’s worth worrying about. It may or may not even be related to the paroxetine, but either way, I’ve been supplementing her breakfast with canned pumpkin to help her out.

I do think the paroxetine is helping. The veterinary behaviorist told us not to expect improvement until Maisy’s been on the medication for 4 to 6 weeks, with full effectiveness at 8 weeks, but even so, I’ve noticed some small changes that give me glimmers of hope.

The first thing I noticed happened after Maisy’s fourth (half) dose, when she actually took a nap in the middle of the afternoon. Not only that, but she actually slept for the entire time, and didn’t startle awake a single time! It used to be that if I touched her while she was lying next to me, she would jump. Now when I pet her (or even just accidentally bump her), she might simply lift her head, but often she just opens her eyes to look at me instead.

The restlessness seems to have reduced as well. For example, about a month ago, Maisy and I were hanging out together while I watched television. Maisy was lying down, and over the course of 45 minutes, I counted 11 times that she lifted her head for two to three minutes to scan the environment. Yesterday, we did the same thing, and although the count came out the same, it seemed like she was actually resting. Each time she lifted her head, it only lasted five to ten seconds, and several times, it seemed that she was actually shifting to get more comfortable. She went from curled up in a ball next to me, to lying flat on her side, to lying sprawled on her back!

I think this is part of an overall trend of lower intensity reactions, especially when something startles her. For example, the other day Maisy was lying next to me quietly when I heard a noise outside. Maisy heard it too, and I thought she was going to jump up like she used to. Instead, she jerked her head slightly, but only lifted it about an inch off the couch! I’m not sure if she interrupted her response on purpose or not, but it was amazing to see.

The vocalizations around the house are happening less often, too. When I did the behavior logs prior to her appointment, I learned that Maisy would jump up and growl, bark or “wuff” at subtle or undetectable stimuli an average of 3.375 times a day. In an effort to get some objective data, I’ve been keeping a behavior log for the last 48 hours. During this time, she’s only displayed the behavior four times, for an average of twice a day.

As for her leash reactivity, well, it’s too soon to say for sure. She did growl a little bit at a chocolate lab that we saw in our local pet store the other day. She even lunged at him, but by the time she reached the end of the leash, the growl had dissolved into this pathetic whine. Later, as we were standing in the check-out line, the same dog rushed up to Maisy, and although she briefly stiffened up, she quickly relaxed.

Yesterday, as we were walking past an elementary school, a group of half a dozen older kids suddenly burst out of the school, chattering loudly. I could see Maisy tensing up as if she was going to lunge and bark. However, instead of having a hair-trigger reaction, it almost seemed like she was thinking about whether or not she should react. This slight hesitation (it was really only an extra half a second) was just enough time for me to interrupt her response, and we played a quick round of Look at That instead!

For all of these changes, Maisy is still the same dog. She’s still energetic, playful, and eager to train and work. Her personality hasn’t changed at all. She doesn’t seem drugged up or different in any way, she just seems more comfortable. We should see this increase as the medication becomes fully effective, and while it’s possible that she might need a second med to help her completely, I’m thrilled with what I’ve seen so far.

Behavior Logs

When you schedule an appointment with a veterinary behaviorist at the U of M, you’re asked to do a number of things. First, there’s a 12 page history form, which I found both frustrating (I don’t do well with rating things according a numerical scale), and perplexing (Is Maisy my best friend? Does she understand me better than anyone else in the world? What are they hoping to learn about us by asking these things?). You also have to get video of the problem behaviors, and while I thought this would be the hard, but ended up with nearly an hour of footage within two days. But the most difficult task, at least for me, is completing a behavior log.

The idea seemed simple in theory: every time Maisy showed a problematic behavior, I was to note the date, the circumstances, who was around, where we were, what she did, and what I thought caused the behavior. Since I love charts and checklists, I mocked up handy chart in Excel and printed it out.

Filling out the chart was difficult, though. I knew which behaviors I wanted to track, but underestimated how tricky it is to categorize some of the things Maisy does. For example, where’s the line between being startled by something reasonable and overreacting? How large must the reaction be, or how often must you see it, before you can write down that she was jumpy?

I also didn’t realize just how often she engaged in weird and potentially troublesome behaviors- I quickly ran out of room on the chart I’d printed up and had to revise it. Besides, should I list each individual jump, or is it better to capture the number of instances in a set amount of time? And of course, what exactly is “normal” quirky and what is “bad” quirky? Which things are worth writing down, and which are inconsequential?

I ended up with a lot of data, and even then, I know I didn’t capture everything. I don’t mean the fact that I couldn’t write down what I didn’t see, while I was at work or while I was asleep. I found that I’m so used to Maisy’s odd habits that I took them for granted. I saw things that I’d never really noticed before. And even then, things still slipped past me; it wasn’t until the last day of charting that I realized, hey, maybe carrying around a stuffed bunny head and whining every night for five minutes isn’t the most normal behavior.

Despite the difficulties, the behavior logs revealed some very interesting things about a dog who I thought I knew very well. After reviewing my logs, I’ve refined the way I describe her, I’ve learned things I didn’t know before, and I’ve begun to see patterns in her behavior. This is just an overview of what I learned:

Maisy is better described as “restless” than “jumpy.”
A lot of what I had previously described as fear was less about being startled by something and more about being unable to relax. For example, during a 45 minute nap one day, there were 11 times that Maisy lifted her head and looked around for up to two minutes following a soft noise. The longest I saw her remain resting during the week was 15 minutes. Maisy just can’t tune out environmental stimuli the way normal dogs can. Yes, she does have moments where she’s startled by something (legitimately or not), but more often, she’s just having trouble tuning out normal things.

Maisy wakes up frequently during the night.
I kept the log on my bedside stand, which is a good thing, because in the mornings, I’d look at it, read my barely legible notes, and think to myself, “I do not remember that happening.” But indeed, she woke me up growling or barking multiple times a night. Considering the fact that she’s so restless during low-key times of the day, this really isn’t that surprising. Still, I’m amazed that I didn’t remember it in the mornings. And hey- now I understand why I feel so tired all the time.

Maisy’s relationship with our cats is far more complicated than I realized.
I was even more surprised that she has so many cat issues. I knew that she does some resource guarding towards them, but I never thought much about it. Those cats are relentless in their quest for food, so I wasn’t surprised that Maisy needed to fend them off from time to time. But I didn’t realize that this behavior has carried over to “disciplining” the cats when they’re naughty. I have no idea if that’s what she’s actually doing, but that’s sure what it looks like. She will rush at the cats and nip them if they do something wrong, by which I mean, stuff that we’ve yelled at them for in the past like scratching furniture and jumping on the counter.

Maisy’s leash reactivity tends to happen when the other dog is already retreating.
I was surprised by how often Maisy’s reactivity happens after the fact- eight out of eleven documented instances happened after the person/dog was leaving, not as they were approaching. (I was surprised that she had so many instances of reactivity, too, but then I realized almost half were deliberate set ups in class so that we could capture video. Still- there were a number of small reactions that I probably wouldn’t have thought much about if it weren’t for the fact that I’m paying such close attention.)


Those first two things really confirmed that this appointment is the right thing to do. Maisy is clearly on edge much of the time. If the veterinary behaviorist recommends medication, I will have no objections to giving it. Given her restlessness, and given the fact that I documented 43 instances of barking or growling over very minor or undetectable stimuli, it almost seems inhumane not to give her some chemical support.

The behavior logs also helped me see some training opportunities. For example, there is a lot I can do to promote a more harmonious relationship between Maisy and our cats now that I know it’s a problem. The logs have also given me a nice baseline. I wish I had them from a year ago, back when we were first starting the hardcore behavior mod work. I’m glad I’ll have some basis for comparison in the future.

All in all, keeping a behavior log, though challenging, was incredibly eye-opening, and I highly, highly recommend that any of you with “quirky” dogs keep a log for a week or so, too.