Thunderstorms: 2, Bella: 0

Last week I talked about how Bella's fear of storms and thunder was outside of my realm of expertise. It was panic, not just ordinary fear and it only subsided when I was able to make it appear to her that thunder had stopped. This little bit of trickery didn't really last long as the next thunderstorm that sent us scurrying to the basement was far more dramatic than the first and I couldn't quite drown out the noise.

First things first

Not really knowing what our options were at the time and being in the height of thunderstorm season here so limited in our time to explore them, our first recourse was our vet. They must have seen cases like this before, they must have ideas, experience, something that could help her.

I love our vets so please don't take this badly but they are pretty traditional types and that, along with not really having seen what Bella was going through and perhaps not understanding the depth of her fear, led them towards the traditional route of medicating her during the 'events'. Unfortunately, the first thing they prescribed for Bella's fear was Acepromazine. They gave us four pills. We have 3 left. Here's why:

I did some research at my go-to blog for all things scaredy-dog, and found this article about Acepromazine by Debbie Jacobs over at fearfuldogs.com. Reading this article now breaks my heart for what we put Bella through. Yes, once the medication kicked in, she seemed calm (downright vegetative, in fact) but her sensitivity to noise and storms afterwards ascended to new heights. Essentially, we took a dog that was afraid of something, did nothing to calm her fear and then paralyzed her ability to react to it. Nice. (I will get over my guilt someday...)

Round two

This is your dog on drugs...
(Not really, that wouldn't be nice.)

Armed with this information, we went back to the vet to discuss some of the recommendations in the article, primarily the use of Valium. On the bright side, our vets know us and know we're going to question them after we've had a chance to do our own research. We are, after all, ultimately the ones responsible for Bella's health and well-being. (This is why we do love our vets - they expect, and allow, us to challenge them.) We left that afternoon with an order for Diazepam.

And that did have the effect of helping Bella to rest if not actually sleep during the storms - if we got it into her in time. So while we were relatively pleased with the result, here's 'the rest of the story':

• The drug must be taken 1 hour prior to an event. That's pretty tough around here where storms can move in over a matter of minutes, not to mention half of them happen when you're asleep.
• It turned her into a zombie and she slept for hours afterwards.
• As a result of her zombie-fication, we obviously couldn't use it on a daily basis over the course of the storm season.

And so it goes...

So Rounds 1 and 2 went to the thunderstorms and our search for something that could help Bella when she needed it to, continued. I can recommend folks talk to their vets about Diazepam if they live in areas where thunderstorms are fairly predictable and/or the storm season short-lived. Our season is essentially April - September so it's a bit long to leave a dog on hard-core tranqs for the entire thing.

And since it appeared this was going to be a long-term challenge, we began looking into less drastic means of helping Bella cope. In the next installment, I'll discuss our attempts to use natural supplements and scents to stem the fear.

To be continued

I know from last week's comments that lots of my readers are dealing with thunder/storm phobias. Have any of you used either of these drugs and, if so, what was your experience? Are you still using them? Did they help/hurt? I'd really love for this to be a discussion because, while things are better in some ways, we've still not found the complete solution. Ever learning...

Saturday's Dog: Celebrating the wins

When my friend, Cindy, and I got together at the end of December to photograph some of the dogs available for adoption at Buddy Dog Humane Society, we got in 11 sessions - 11 dogs. Between then and now, 5 of those dogs have been adopted! At this rate, we have a better batting average for adoptions of the dogs we haven't featured here. ;)

Today, I'd like to take a moment to celebrate the wins, the dogs who found their forever homes, the ones who keep hope alive, the ones who prove there are families out there looking for dogs as wonderful as these. I'm just thrilled to have had the opportunity to spend a day playing with them.

So kick back, put your feet up and enjoy the awesomeness of happy dogs.

Bauer

Sam

Annie

Josie

Boomer

Happy tails, pups! May all your days be as much fun as this one was.

Wordless Wednesday 24 - Theo

Apparently I have been remiss in acknowledging that I have, on occasion, shared my life with cats as well as dogs. So, here's proof of such: Theo, God rest his precious little soul.

Note: Given Bella's extraordinary prey drive, as well as Jan's cat allergies, it would be foolish and irresponsible for us to adopt a cat at this time. Instead, I live vicariously through my sister who's just this side of 'crazy cat lady'. I'm hoping to share some of her kitty pictures here over time.

Things that go boom in the night

It was a dark and not-so-stormy night. At least that's how it started...

Fast forward to June 2009

This is what happens in New England: You go to bed on a lovely summer evening only to be wakened abruptly by the furious crashing of thunder and lightening around 2 o'clock in the morning. (Or at least you do if you're the female half of this equation - Jan will sleep through the apocalypse and wonder where everyone went when he wakes the next morning.) I don't know why storms here like to occur at this particularly ungodly hour but that's kind of the way of it. Luckily, I tend to be both a light sleeper and a bit of an insomniac so at least one human in the household is capable of functioning during these events.

Insert perfectly irrelevant picture of pretty dog here.

If you've been following the blog for any length of time, you probably know this already but for anyone just joining us, it's important to our story to know that Bella was born on the streets of Puerto Rico. Without shelter for much of her first 5 months during an extremely active hurricane season, perhaps we should have anticipated her excessive reaction to the first boomer that blasted through our area that summer. As it was, we were caught totally unprepared.

In my rather long history with animals, I've known plenty who "didn't like" thunderstorms - my mom and dad's dog, Misty, used to hide under their computer desk whenever it stormed. It was evident she didn't like them but there were no visible signs of panic and dread. Within moments of that first crack of thunder, however, it was clear we were dealing with a different beast in Bella's reaction.

Houston, we have a problem

It was tragic to watch our little girl tremble, pace and pant in abject terror. She had learned with many of her fears to come to us for reassurance, perhaps protection and she did try this with the thunder by climbing into bed with us. We were unrealistically hopeful that she would settle and lie down with us but she preferred to stand - on Jan (well, that's one way to wake him up). Honestly, I think we could have lived with that. It was when she started trying to climb the headboard of the bed that we realized this was going to be a problem: Bella was trying to escape.

She was in a blind panic and I was fast approaching the same - this couldn't be good for her physically. I had no idea what to do - my mind raced to all I had read about fearful dogs:

• Control the environment - um, well yeah okay but if I could do that, I'd be rich.
• Remove the object of fear - again, not so helpful here, moving on...
• Move the dog away from the object - wait, what? We may have just stumbled upon something remotely useful.

Bella's couch.

Short of putting her in the car to travel outside the storm area, we did have a slim possibility of removing Bella from the frightening situation. At least it was worth a try. I sent Jan back to sleep (not that this required much coercion), grabbed the dog and headed to the basement.

Our basement, yay for me, is finished and in fact where we have our "entertainment" area. Unsure what to expect, I turned on the television to some station that was playing music and turned the volume up - way up - until it drowned out the sound of the thunder. Soon, Bella climbed up on the couch next to me, let out a heavy sigh and promptly fell asleep. And this is how she and I have spent pretty much every single thunderstorm in the three years since.

A first on Bringing up Bella: The series

We have tried just about every product on the market to help her with this debilitating fear: drugs, wraps, scents, sounds, TTouch, you name it. Nothing has proven 100% effective. Over the next several weeks, I'll lay out what we tried and our experience with each.

And now for the requisite disclaimer: I am not a vet - my discussion of medications is strictly anecdotal. The products being reviewed were purchased, not offered to us for review - I will present my experience and give an honest opinion. I hope if folks have had different experiences, you will feel welcome to offer them and your own opinions here as well.

Finally, I have virtually no pictures of Bella from during these events. While a visual study of fear displays in dogs may be useful, I'm her hu-mom not her scientist.

Saturday's dog: Althea

What is is about a picture of dog with ball that can raise a smile to the face of any viewer?

Meet Althea.

Althea is a 3-year-old Shepherd mix available for adoption at Buddy Dog Humane Society in Sudbury, MA. She is full of energy, friendly and affectionate. She would do well in an active home that can keep her well exercised and mentally stimulated. (Read: She's smart!)

So once again, here's my weekly plea to ask you to help get Althea's story out there so that active family who's looking for her can finally find her. You can just click here to tweet her story or here to post her to your Facebook stream.

As always, thank you.