Update

Been so pleasantly busy with the start of the new semester. I am a person who loves her routine and keeping busy.

We took Gustav off the prozac as we didn't see any change and, to be honest, he actually seems a little more responsive on walks since then. Too many confounding factors to attribute that to the prozac, though.

Loona, my mom and dad's dog, is living at our house for the weekend. I took all three on a loong two hour walks yesterday and everyone was lovely. Gustav sort of dragged behind, which was odd, but did a great job with autowatches and keeping a lid on things. However, he did poor job responding to his name, which is something we've been practicing on walks. The addition of Loona and loss of the prozac are both possible factors in his behavior.

I'm looking into the possibility of another anti-anxiety drug. Justin is skeptical and I'm not sure, but I'll do some research and see what I think.

I had goals for the dogs training-wise in terms of set-ups and other things a certain number of times a week. I would say I get a "C" for fulfilling them. With the gradually warming weather and getting used to the school routine, I'm optimistic that I can get completely up to speed. It's fairly modest: a set-up a week for each (together is fine), relax-on-a-mat for Dottie three times a week, and a separation anxiety session for Gustav twice a week. And lots of u-turns and looking at me (for Gustav) on walks. The u-turns are going great, the looking at me is okay but I practice a lot so hopefully it will improve, the set-ups are pretty much on par with my goal, but the matwork and separation anxiety have not been getting done. Oh well.

So, that's what's new here.

Breakthrough!

If you've read this blog for a while, you know that Gustav's "rock bottom" was snarling at Justin's mom and hitting her hard in the face, enough to cause a bad nose bleed. Granted, he was chewing on a meaty bone and she was leaning over him, petting him behind the ears.
In any case, she was over recently and we crated Gustav like always. After several hours, we decided to try having him out. It went completely fine. He totally ignored her and acted as though he were home with just us. Maybe we were being overly cautious all this time, as he hardly ever had any problems with strangers in the house before that (a few strange exceptions included him barking at certain visitors. No clue what made him fine with almost everyone but not just a few).
Anyhow, I was very happy. Definitely time to get Tisha over to test out how he does. I think crating him for the first little while is key, while Dottie calms down and there's no dramatic entrance scene, complete with looming, to deal with.
Yay! She always wanted to be his buddy. Maybe soon he'll be putting his head her lap for petting like he does with his "inner circle."
Still no prozac effect. It's been ten weeks. We just upped the dosage a week ago, since I wanted to give it two months just in case. I obviously want to be giving the lowest effective dose possible.