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Old August 20th, 2008, 02:22 PM
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Dog Dancer Dog Dancer is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Vancouver, BC
Posts: 6,667
Copperbelle I feel your pain. My girl Shadow (Akita X - 11 years old) has had SA since she was 1 year old. I was fortunate my late husband was retired and stayed with her 99% of the time and the rest of the time we had to hire a doggysitter. When my husband passed we got a second dog, and that didn't help at all. Off she went to Doggy Day Care for five years. $$$$ We tried a behaviorist, chlomicalm, vet stuff you name it. No good, she is also claustrophobic and we were never able to crate her, even before the SA stuff came up. When I moved in with my current fellow the two dogs stayed outside on the back deck (2nd story over a garage) for about 2 years and all was fine. I'd go home at lunch and see them. Then suddenly Shadow said, no more and started jumping off the roof to get out. That was no good. Back to day care. $$$$ Now for the past two years I have been fortunate enough that my boss allows me to bring her to work with me. That's a 70 lb dog sleeping under my desk. But everybody in the building loves her and she loves them. But of course it doesn't solve the issue and probably makes it worse as she is never alone now. If we go out we still hire somebody to sit with the dogs. It's so hard to deal with, but we've not found anything else that gives us solid results. We did have her for a while where we could leave her for several hours, but that melted down. Even then it was never comfortable to go out and wonder if this was the day you'd come home and fine the blinds torn down, the doors shredded apart and blood all over the house - again!! A large determined dog can do immense damage to the house and themselves. I have not tried the second drug mentioned, but at this stage we just put up with it and spend lots of $$ on dog sitters (my neighbourhood kids love it). Good luck to you. Wish I had a suggestion to help you but no such advice from me.
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