hTough Love

October30th, 2012I

So all of my years watching "The Dog Whisperer" starting to resurface.  I remembered that Drake was a dog first and impaired second.  I needed to start treating him like a dog.  He needed some tough love and I needed a break.

I had decided to start removing him from wherever he was when he started the spin.bark combo.  If he was in his playroom, I would put him in the bedroom and close the dog gate closing him out of the play room.  He had a lot of things that triggered his spin/bark.  Being around water triggered him.  He was over the tub, but the toilet would send him into a good spin.  I heard that when he was with a foster before prison that he ate the water hose under the toilet and flooded the toilet room.  With that in mind, I had purchased a over the toilet shelving unit that would hopefully keep him from being able to get to the hose.

He would lick the tile in front of the toilet and bark looking directly at the toilet.  The licking the tile was not a new problem.  I had seen him do it in other areas of the bathroom.  I knew that licking is a form of anxiety.  He demonstrated every anxiety act that I had ever read about.  He panted,, licked, barked, spun.  Just a classic case of anxiety.  Question was, what was causing it?  Then what to do about it?

Same thing outside.  Water really seemed to be a double issue.  He could not stand to be sprayed with it.  However, wet ground, he just had to dig.  Every time he dug in wet dirt, he became manic and panted.  He would decide on a spot to dig by smell, sometime that would not include water.  When the digging started, the manic behavior always followed.  I know that Dachshunds would dig by breed in order to kill varmints.  So I assumed it was partially due to breeding, but his manic behavior did not seem right.  I always stopped him as quickly as I could, told him no, no and redirected him.  Many times he would be fine for a while.  Other times he did not snap out of it and just looked for another place to dig.

His behavior was improving on one level, but I was uncovering new layers of problems every day.  The layers of problems seemed endless.  He had such a sweetness about him.  Never seemed to blame humans for his problems.  Never offered to bite.  Always accepting of whatever I asked and always very loving.  I had my heart full of him, but I was so resentful of him at times, I didn't ever know how to feel.