The Meltdown

The whole family had a difficult summer and fall. My father, who was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma last year, went for a 3 month checkup in July 2007 and they found lesions on his brain. I drove the dogs from Maine to Cape May New Jersey, to help my mother and family care for him as he underwent radiation and a trial drug therapy. He died August 23. We were devastated, and the dogs looked after us well. I took family medical leave to stay with my mother, and we were in Cape May with her two cats until October. The dogs like Cape May, and they love my mother, and the cats became part of their "pack." When we moved back to Maine and I returned to work, they adjusted pretty well to their life at home, but they loved loved loved it when "Grandma" and the cats came to live with us for 6 weeks. Having someone who loved them stay home and keep them company?? Having cats to curl up with and play with? What could be better.

We all weathered our first Christmas without my father and a long drive to Florida, where my mother lives for the winter. The dogs love her condo, especially the lanai. The pack had expanded to include my girlfriend, whom they adore. She had spent the end of December with us in the ice storm, gone with us to Cape May for Christmas, and had met us in Florida for two weeks. We all survived the plane ride home from Florida. And then, when the semester began in mid-January and life returned to "normal"--no grandma in the guest room, no girlfriend at home, no cats in the dog beds, and mom back at work--Stella had a meltdown.

She developed separation anxiety, which she had never exhibited before, and her noise phobias snowballed. New household sounds, such as the baseboard heaters pinging, sent her into full-blown panic. She paced, panted, and trembled. She vocalized when I left the house. She developed anxiety about coming to bed at night, when the heater noises seemed unbearable and sent her flying for cover downstairs. She chose a safe place in the living room, under a table at the far end of the couch, and began to spend hours there. Sleeping at night with a panicked dog was becoming difficult, and leaving Stella in the morning was heart-wrenching. I had to make an appointment with my vet, even though we were scheduled to see Dr. Dodman at Tufts 10 days later. We needed help NOW.

Stella's Story Part 2: The Fearful Dog

Stella's noise phobias were evident from the time she came home, but I took her to puppy classes hoping they would help her conquer her fears. She did fine in her first class, where the dogs were tethered to the wall to keep them spaced well apart from each other, and where they were interacting primarily with their owners. She was a quick study, and I had high hopes for her next class.

When we moved up, dogs were working at various levels of obedience training. One of my friends, who was teaching a retrieve for her Rottie, tossed his very large wooden dumbbell across the room, and it landed with a huge thud. At that moment, Stella decided that she was finished with class. Miserable and afraid, she ran for her crate. I tried to work with her in quieter corners of the room, but she shut down, refused food, and exhibited her most unpleasant (for humans) expression of fear, nervous defecation. With her anxiety seeming to increase rather than decrease, I abandoned the project. I was not willing to subject her to repeated fearful experiences without any signs that she might recover enough to learn, and she was really too afraid to learn.

We waited out the long winter months, and Stella's first spring in Maine came around. In April was time for Douce to train outdoors in agility. We train at a beautiful farm in North Yarmouth, and I brought Stella along for the scenery. There was a pair of secretive bitterns nesting in the pond and the tadpoles were still small. Stella walked the grassy areas of the drive and explored the tall grasses left from winter, but when it was time for instruction, she stayed in her crate where she seemed comfortable.

After 6 weeks of classes, Stella was positively moaning about being confined to her crate, when all the fun was happening out in the agility ring. A classmate accused her of making "baby noises"--she does have quite a vocal range. So she emerged from her crate like a nestling, and seemed to adore agility training. I enrolled her in foundations class, and she worked very nicely at her own pace. While she was leery of many obstacles at first, in the past two summers, she has mastered the Buja board, the big tunnels with their scary change of footing, the chute with its scary enclosure of fabric, a full height A frame. She was even conquering the teeter by this past June. Victory! Until winter came . . .

The indoor training space we moved to is large and echoing. Stella felt pressured by the closer proximity of dogs, and she really hated the sound of the metal teeter banging. When it was her turn to practice, she couldn't even take a jump, and ran for the safety of her crate. I have let her seek the comfort of her crate, but she has never asked to come out and practice they way she did outdoors. It’s been a disappointment, because I think that agility training is a great confidence builder for her.

The Story of Stella Part 1: Coming Home

This is the story of Stella, a delightful and funny Shih Tzu who suffers from noise phobia and anxiety. In two days, she is going to visit Dr. Dodman, one of the premier Certified Animal Behaviorists in the country, who works at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts. I am really looking forward to that consultation, and learning more about what I can do to help Stella cope with situations that cause her stress.

Stella is almost four years old. I met her online as a tiny pup, and fell in love with her. She came from a caring and reputable breeder, and I know that she had a wonderful life in the fourteen weeks before she came from Minnesota to live with me in Maine. The first thing I noticed about Stella was how trusting and confident she can be. Her breeder and I met in the airport, signed paperwork, hugged each other, and then I took Stella to catch a connecting flight home to Portland, Maine. When that flight was canceled, I had a chance to get to know my new charge in a hotel room somewhere near the Minneapolis airport. She was happy to be carried in her Sherpa bag and walked on leash, and she took over of the hotel room immediately! She marched on the furniture, tried to eat my pizza, and stretched out next to me to watch TV. She was so excited about the king bed that she couldn't settle down, and I finally had to put her in the bathroom so we could both get some rest. When we flew home the next day, she did really well on the plane, cuddling up by my neck and letting herself be greeted by flight attendants and passengers.

This was also the day she got her name. Stella is named after Brenda Buja's American Staffordshire Terrier, an "off breed" for agility who did amazingly well in the sport. Stella the Stafforshire was a dog that I had a soft spot for as soon as I met her at an agility class with Douce. I remarked on the charm of Stella's name, and Brenda said that it was a great call name and generously invited me to use it someday. In retrospect, I may have sealed my fate at that moment. Stella was shy! But she worked so well for Brenda in agility. So I was set on Stella as the call name for my new pup, but didn't have an ACK name. A Chinese family on the plane with us was so taken with the puppy, and I told them the story of how the Shih Tzu was a favorite of the Dowager Empress. They suggested that she should have a royal name, after the empress, containing the word star, for Stella, so she came home "Xin Xin Gonzu," or "Princess Star." I may I created a monster at the moment, because my girl has two personalities: shy baby, and princess of the world.

On Stella's first day home, she met Douce, her "big brother," who seemed very disappointed--well disgusted-- that she was not a guinea pig, as he had met one he really liked a few weeks earlier. Stella was a bit leery of him, but took immediately to the cat, Zami. I think that Zami, a black and white creature like Stella, and Stella's siter and her father, looked familiar to her. Unfortunately, Zami, at 17 year of age, wanted nothing to do with puppies, and promptly rebuffed Stella's invitations to play. Douce also pointedly ignored Stella for a week. On the seventh day, he invited her to dig with him in his dog bed. A sibling relationship was born. She chewed on his ears and dog tags, he pulled the bows out of her hair, and all seemed right in the household.

The first time I noticed Stella's shyness was when, during her first week with me, I took her to a coffee shop and sat at a table outside. The traffic clearly bothered her, and when a bus pulled up and she heard the air breaks, she cowered under my cast iron patio chair and defecated. At the time, I attributed her response to a lack of familiarity with a city environment, but noise phobia and nervous defecation would turn out to be an ongoing problem for us . . .