FloraTheGrey

1Hi all! Thank you for the advice. I wanted to update yall on Flora, in case it is helpful for other people in a similar situation. Its been just under 4 weeks since we made our first post, and Flora has improved a lot! She now happily puts on her coat (and tolerates us putting on her booties), and walks with us to the elevator and to her potty spot, in a quiet side-garden by the building. She doesnt react much to cars driving up and down the adjacent driveway into our garage. What worked for us: -Adaptil Collar + Diffuser; We think this helped her feel more relaxed in the apartment, but probably not with going outside. -Composure (3x/day) + Zylkene: This, we think was the most important. The Zylkene in particular seemed help her be calm enough that we could do lots of desensitization training with her coat, the hallway, and the elevator. -A lot of peanut butter and hot dog (her two favorites). The peanut butter in particular seemed to help calm her down when close to her "threshold" of fear. -Reading posts here talking about "flooding" and fear thresholds. We realized that her fear threshold was super low, and so she'd get overwhelmed and couldnt learn anything. The Composure + Zylkene seemed to bump that threshold up enough that she could start learning that it was safe. Now we know that when she is flooded with scary stuff / way above her threshold, its not worth staying there for her to "learn" its ok; that just makes it worse. We calmly take her back to safety when this happens and then try again another time. This all took about 2 weeks. For most of that, I was carrying her from our apartment door all the way outside, and we were really worried it wouldnt ever get better. Thank you all (and all the other posts on Greytalk that we read over and over!) for letting us know that it would pass. But she still has a ways to go. We haven't been able to take her very far outside of the little garden area. We did a few times, late at night, on snowy days that were particularly quiet, but before we got too far, she'd hear something that scared her. Big trucks, non-standard cars (stuff with souped up motors, or broken engines that sound weird), motorcycles, people driving over a pothole that makes a ka-thunk sound... anything like that and she spooks and goes into a full fear response. Now she's regressed a bit, and balks as we start getting close to the driveway that leads out to the main street. We are slowly working on desensitization training that seems to be going okay. Also trying to get her used to car rides so we can hopefully take her to a quiet(er) park. She's good about the car at least. Based on our vet's recommendation, we just started her on Clomicalm to see if that helps relax her more when outside.

Have you had any luck with your grey? Mine is having a lot of the same issues, particularly holding their pee/poop in order to refuse to go outside (mine will lay on the floor, even though she woke us up and was looking for a place to pee. We have been waiting for her to get up again since 5am) Once we get out, she freezes at the elevator door, and won't go in without assistance.

Thank you everyone for the kind words! It has been very reassuring, and we needed to hear that it will improve. Once we get her outside, she has been okay at getting to her grassy spot, and calming down there, even if it takes a bit. The big problem is getting her out there! The trip from our door to the elevator is slow, which is ok, but getting her to go *inside* the elevator is a challenge. She does it sometimes (I think when she really needs to go, as she realizes it means outside), but otherwise she will freeze at the door (and we cant hold it open forever because the elevator alarm goes off after about 60 seconds). Today, she refused to go at 7am, did go in at noon (but only peed), and then refused at 4:30. I guess our worry is whether to bring her back home if she wont go in after a few tries, or to scoot her into the elevator myself. We dont want to let her learn that she can avoid the outside by balking, but also give her opportunities to go to the bathroom. Thank you for the harness training tips! I will start with that tomorrow. Thank you so much for the reminder. We were (clearly) getting very anxious about her anxiety. Inside the apartment, she is relaxed. She spends most of the day asleep either in her crate, or on the carpet in the living room. She seems to enjoy having her head gently pet while she sits, as she will poke my hand or look at me when I stop. We can both be out of sight (in the connected kitchen where she can hear but not see us), and she doesnt immediately worry, although we are still sleeping in the living room with her at night. Its only when going outside (or getting ready too) that we have problems. We will order some Adaptil / DAP products now, and ask about other options at the vet. Do you leave the diffusers running all the time, or just for a few hours during the day? Thats good to hear. My partner and I are both from a much bigger city, so where we are now seemed relatively quiet. But having spent time with our hound outside, Ive begun to notice just how many cars, bikes, and people there are around our block. Hoping she will improve with time like your grey.

My partner and I just adopted a 3.5 yr old brindle girl 3 days ago. She is sweet and relaxed inside our apartment, but incredibly anxious and scared of loud noises, new people/dogs, and especially cars. We have been working on improving that with some success, but we made several mistakes that has erased some progress and we need advice. Summary: new girl very anxious and scared of the outside world and the elevator, but calm in the apartnent. We made several mistakes: First night we forced her to go out for a walk and she was completely terrified (loud cars, headlights, new places). The second day we drove her to a forested park, and both the ride and especially the park were overwhelming and very scary. We got her to walk a bit but probably should have left much sooner than we did, and she did have a big startle moment there. After that we decided to just focus on potty breaks (now in a more secluded spot) and no walks yet. Yesterday she did ok w/ breaks in the morning, but in the evening we tried two new routes to the spot (b/c the previous one involved a gated driveway that would be closed semi-permanently soon). One involved going down 3 steps of stairs and that did not get further than 1 step with assistance before she was terrified. The other was opening the door of another car garage, but the mechanism (stomping on an air tube on the ground) completely spooked and I mean SPOOKED her more than anything. This morning she completely refused (laying down on her side) to go out for her 7am potty (but did wake us up at 2am to go out--we did the old route and she did fine). We eventually gave up and fed her breakfast, which she still refused to come into the kitchen (near the door we use to go out) for. We have been giving her chicken and yogurt as high value treats for these situations as positive reinforcement, but when she gets too scared she won't eat. She seems to be regressing after us accidentally putting her into scary situations, (especially trying the new route last night), and this is ruining the routine we want to set for her. She has begun to balk more and more whenever her outdoor coat, leash, or our jackets get out on. Previously, she would be anxious but we could coax her out but today she has learned that she can just lay down completely. How can we get her comfortable going outside again so we can retrain the trip to her potty spot? How can we get her to stand up from laying down? We are going to need to use the new route out very soon. Is it better to carry her up and down the 3 steps of stairs than try to walk her through the now scary door? I have not picked her up yet. More details: We originally planned for her potty spot to be a field of grass across the street. To get there, we have to go downstairs via the elevator, through the apartment buildings garage, and out the door onto the street. The first day we took her to the spot before bringing her in, and while she froze a lot along the street, she eventually crossed, and eventually peed after going to the middle of the field. But she then froze and would only go back to the car (and that was a challenge). That night, we tried to take her for a walk around the block, first to the potty spot, and then going further. This went horribly. We live in a smaller city, in an area with mostly houses, but it was too much. It was dark, and there were a lot of cars driving by, and she completely froze in fear. Our first mistake was making her keep moving--we basically had to scoot her step by step all the way around the block while she froze. It took over an hour. At the very end, she seemed to relax very briefly and sniffed the ground and pooped. We wanted her to potty outside so that she learned not to go indoors. After that, we knew we had to find a new spot. There is a small patch of grass alongside part of the building that we could get to (at least for now) by going out the same garage door and walking around the building. On the morning of day 2 we took her there and while the journey had several freezes and some scooted, once there she went potty more easily. We also did training to make lot of progress on making the trip to elevator less scary. Later on day 2 we took her in the car to a forested park, but both the drive and the park of that were overwhelming, especially the park because it was full of people and cars in the parking lot. She did a bit better on quiet spells but would get scared again when other dogs, or loud groups of people passed. We stayed at the park longer than we should have (we wanted to get her exercise), and on the way back she got startled (by the poop bag holder clacking against her leash) while already on alert because of approaching dogs and jumped in the air and snarled. We got her home eventually but the walk back to the parking lot had a lot of freezing and waiting her out with treats as a reward. I think after this my partner and I's black winter jackets became very scary and we switched to other coats to get her to go out. Our plan for her schedule going forward is/was: potty at 7am, breakfast after that (7:30 or 8 depending), 2nd potty around noon, dinner at 5 or 5:30, 3rd potty at 6, and final one at 9:30 or 10. Yesterday was the 3rd day, and she went out to potty (using the old route) no problem at 7am, with just my partner, but we think only because she REALLY needed to potty. She slept through the morning and into the afternoon, so we didn't go on the noon potty break. We realized that we needed to find a new route to her spot, because there was a gate in the alleyway that would be locked soon (it's been open b/c it's snowing but usually closed). There were 2 options that led directly to her potty spot: go down 3 steps of stairs, or go through the garage door in a different garage than the old route. We first tried the steps b/c we thought we couldn't open the garage door from this direction. She did not get too far with that-- i lifted her paw to put it down on the first step and the movement scared her to the point of not accepting treats. Her back paws slid a bit as she tried to catch herself which didn't help. We waited to see if she would calm down but eventually gave up. Later we found we could open the garage door for the new route by stomping on an tube (that cars normally drive over). We tried this yesterday for her 10pm "final" potty break and while it took several attempts of showing her it was ok, she eventually went out and peed. We tried to wait to see if she would poop too, as she hadn't since the morning, but eventually went in. My partner tried again taking her out by herself at 11:30 and had a terrible experience. She stomped on the air tube but since the dog was much closer this time she was completely terrified. My partner described it as the most scared she has been, by far. Needless to say, she brought her back upstairs. She didn't poop last night b/c of this, and woke us up at 2am today. We took her out (using the old route) and she did fine, because she REALLY needed to poop (woke us up and was circling next to her crate for a while which is how we knew). However, this morning we got up to take her for her morning potty and she has completely refused to move, now fully laying down. Before she would reluctantly come with us to the door after a bit. We waited and tried a twice but eventually skipped it and gave her her breakfast (with her coat and leash still on) but she refused to come get it as we normally feed her in the kitchen by the door we use to the hallway. We are unsure of how to proceed. We need to train her to at least one of the 2 new routes (stairs, or the garage door associated a horrible experience) soon. We could also try carrying her up and down the 3 stairs for now? But all of this means getting her out of the apartment, and that has now become harder than ever. For a most of yesterday, she seemed to be steadily improving as long as we have her time to watch and think but now we can't get her to these situations to train--all the steps we need to do before going out are making her stop. We know we made a lot of mistakes, but hopefully there is something we can do to rebuild her trust and courage. Thank you for reading all of this. We have bought a harness to help with guiding her, but apart from leaving it on the ground near her to desensitize it, we haven't tried putting it on since that may be a whole new scary thing.Her first vet appointment is in a few days, and we are thinking about asking about anxiety medication to make building confidence/safe experiences easier. We want to make apartment life with us work for her if we can.