G2:Find a solution that will work for me and both my dogs.

Agathas problem and what really is the matter with her. I need to understand it in order to find the best solution for her. But I just don`t. Before she went to stay with my parents for a week, she seemed restless, and then the night before she left, she woke me up, clearly in some pain or discomfort. Then she went to stay with my parents for 9 days. They said she seemed absolutely fine, relaxed and happy, no signs of pain or stress whatsoever. Ofcourse, they don`t know her like I do, there might have been signs that they didn`t see. But at least nothing seruiously wrong at all, most likely, she was fine. She got back yesterday, and now I just took the dogs to the park, letting Cora play with a stone and throwing tennisballs for Agatha. One second, everything was fine. The next second, Agatha was whimpering hysterically, looking scared and bewildered, the classic pain-episode signs. Why?? I threw more tennisballs for her, then went straight back home to give her painkillers, and now I`ve hidden treats around to keep her occupied, and she seems ok again.
One of my theories has been that maybe her back actually seemed better than it really was because the summer heat helped, and that she is feeling worse again because of colder weather. But then why was she fine when she stayed with my parents? They took her for long walks in the forest everyday, and I haven`t done that today because of Coras paw, but could that really cause pain just one day later? She was in the forest for 2 hours just yesterday.

Another theory is that she is having anxiety attacks rather than pain. And maybe she is actually more relaxed with my parents. There she has a calm, consistent daily routine, no going back and forth to dogsitters, no home alone training, no changes in where and when she goes for walks, they do the same things every day, lots of exercise, lots of attention and very little stress.
I have been thinking lately that I could try to find someone who might want a “part time dog” someone who could have her with them on weekdays for instance, and let me have her here a lot of weekends and some evenings or something. But if stability is what she needs, then that might just make things worse.
But then again, it might just be a coincidence that she was better when staying with my parents. And maybe if I find her a new home and she doesn`t get to stay with me at all, that could be too much for her to deal with and things could end terribly.
When episodes like today keep happening, I really don`t see how I could leave her alone all day, not knowing if she is terrified because of pain and/or anxiety. But as long as I don`t really know what is going on, how on earth will I be able to make the best choice for her?

I was hoping Agathas stress lately was due to an infection or something, and her bloodsample yesterday showed some signs of that. Today they checked her urine though, and it showed no sign of an infection whatsoever. And they said that what they found in her blood can very well be due to stress and not an infection. So now there seems to be two possible reasons. Either she has had a bad reaction to the anxiety meds that she has been taking for a few weeks, and that have caused her to feel stressed, which affected her bloodcells. Or, she is stressed because the back problems are back, and she`s in pain. Which is ofcourse, disaster. That would mean all my hopes of her being able to have a healthy life after all and learning to be home alone will probably just not be possible.
This is just too much to deal with.

and she said everything I had feared she could say. She didn`t really know why Agatha is drinking and peeing a lot these days. But she did say that she seems to have some pain in her back. Agatha didn`t like it when the vet touched the muscles at the sides of her back, and she resisted having her left back leg stretched, which indicates some back pain. She said she didn`t seem to be in bad pain, but there was some reaction, and she suggested painkillers to see if that helps. And she said some dogs drink a lot of water when they are stressed, although it`s not common.
I just felt my heart drop, and that old feeling of panic and heartbreak just overpowered me again. If the back problems are coming back, that is absolute disaster. She can`t be alone then, and finding her a new home would also be very difficult.

I just took the dogs to the forest. I let them off leash, and watched them dance around me, zig-zaging in and out of the forest at the speed of lightning and having tug-o-wars over sticks. They both looked like the very image of canine health and happiness, Agatha was rushing around, even jumping over Cora at one point, there didn`s seem to be a single thing bothering her. Could she still be having pain?
I`ll just have to try, once again, to take one day at a time and not panic just yet. I cling to the hope that it`s something else, maybe the meds that made her feel uncomfortable caused stress and tense muscles or something. But I`m not sure how realistic that is.

EDIT: A little bit more hope to cling to. The vet just called me with the results from Agathas tests. Turns out her blood samples indicate there might be an infection. Nothing much, but she said she could either have parasites, allergies or an infection on it`s way. Which might be why she is drinking more, and maybe she is stressed because of the infection, or because all the water she drinks makes her constantly need to go out to pee. However, that doesn`t change the fact that the vet said Agatha did seem to have signs of a back problem. Sigh. Must try to make her pee in a box tomorrow and get back to the vets with the sample so they might find out more.

and completely untrainable these days. Which is a huge worry, I was awake half the night last night worrying, and when I finally feel asleep I had nightmares about Agatha getting hurt. This really is awful. My huge fear right now is that she is stressed out because the pain is back. There is a chance that she has been feeling so well this summer because warm weather is good for her muscles, and that she is feeling worse again now that it is getting colder. Which would be disaster, I can`t teach her to be home alone if that is the case. However, it struck me today that actually both the dogs seem to be drinking and peeing a lot more than normal these days. So it might be that they have some sort of urinary infection. It would be a bit weird that they got it at the same time, but still. If Agatha constantly feels she needs to pee, it`s no wonder she is stressed and restless. I`ll take them to the vet tomorrow, all paws crossed that it is something treatable like that, that is causing Agathas problems!

on saturday.
I haven`t been able to find anyone to watch the dogs while I go to pianolesson, and I really don`t want to miss out on that. So, I`ve decided to bring them and leave them in the car. They are used to waiting in the car while I go grocery shopping, but that usually takes something like 10-15 minutes, half an hour at the very most. Pianolesson is closer to an hour. I have tried it before, and it lead to Agatha having a pain episode. At that time, the vet thought it was because sitting still in the car, waiting for me and feeling tense for an hour caused inflamation in her back. Now it seems it was probably an anxiety attack though.
So I`m thinking that since I now know that, and I know that exercise helps, I can do it differently. The plan is to stop by the forest on the way, and walk the dogs off leash for at least an hour. The go right back to the forest after pianolesson for another walk, to help Agatha release the tension.
It might work, but it could also cause a step back, she is extremely clingy these days. Sigh. But Agathas problems are really controlling my life, and I need my pianolessons, it is one of the things I do for me and only me, just for fun, and I need it.

That was an extremely hard decision. But desperate times calls for desperate measures. She has been on those meds before, while I was working on teaching her to be home alone. They made her really depressed though, my otherwise always happy and exited Agatha was all of a sudden in a bad mood almost all the time. So I reduced the doses, and she became herself again, but then the meds didn`t really have any effect. She has tried one other kind to, but they didn`t seem to have much effect on her.
But I am willing to do a lot to avoid losing my Agatha. So if the meds do help by making her more relaxed while we are working on the home alone thing, I will just have to deal with her being depressed I think. It is temporary after all. It could be up to 6 months though. But if it helps her to learn to be home alone, I will be able to keep her, which is the best thing for both of us, so I just have to let her go through that. Sigh.

really is a serious amount of work! I just managed to spend a whole day on dogs and only dogs.
We started our day with a long walk in the forest. Then we went to a pet shop that has a sort of clinic, so the dogs could have their yearly vaccines. I saved some money on doing it there, which I immediately spent on dog treats and yukky goo (meaning raw dog food, I actually asked for yukky goo and they immediately knew what I wanted, which says a lot about the level of yukkines.) Then we went home, I gave the dogs some chewing bones, and waited for them to finish chewing and settling down before leaving them alone for 20 minutes, as part of training Agatha. Then I served the yukky goo, and it was time for our evening walk. After that I finally had time to investigate a bad smell I noticed in the apartment this morning. It turned out the smell had a curly origin. Which meant a resentful Agatha ended up in the shower. And then I had to clean the floors, to try to get rid of the smell.

Wow, a long doggy day! Granted, this was not an average day, but still. I really need to make sure to have some me-time tomorrow!

The good news is that Agatha set a new olympic record in poodle independence today: 20 minutes! With the door locked and me out of the building. She was lying by the front door, eagerly waiting for me, but she was not barking or howling, and the fact that she was lying down does mean she was not panicking.
The bad news is, she now seems generally more stressed about me leaving. Since I have been working more on this lately, she seems to expect that I will get up and leave at some point during the evening. When I started working on it a couple of weeks ago, she would stay where ever she was, not bothering to get up and try to follow me. This time, I heard her rushing over to the door when I was closing it behind me. And she seems less relaxed in the evenings, like she is constantly keeping an eye on me rather than sleeping and relaxing.

The idea here is to practice leaving her alone a little bit longer all the time, so that she will feel comfortable in the process and not panic, fast enough to make sure there is progress and slow enough to keep her from getting uncomfortable or panicking. That balance is hard to find. Ideally, I think I should go back to only leaving for a few seconds or minutes for a while now, until she starts relaxing again. But there is just no time for that, we need to work this out in a few short months. I do have to push her a little. But if I push her too much and she panics, everything is ruined and we will be back to square one. Sigh. This is really hard!

that made agatha panic a couple of hours ago. The bloody builders are out of here for the day. So I just went outside locked the door and left the dogs alone for a couple of minutes just to test Agatha. She didn`t even bother to get off the couch. Come to think of it, that is probably why she has been clingy the last couple of days as well, even when she`s not alone, the noise is probably scary and painful for her to deal with.
It is good to know she is probably not in pain or anything like that. But it leaves me with a huge problem. The building next door will go on for at least a year. It will not be as noisy as it is now the whole time, but it will be noisy. And she has to learn to be home alone, during the day when the builders are working. Crap.

This is so depressing. I just went to the laundry room in the basement, leaving the dogs alone for 5 minutes or so. When I got back, I heard Agatha desperately howling for me. 5 minutes is not long, she has managed up to 15 lately, it shouldn`t have been a problem.

I can imagine 2 reasons. Either, she`s not feeling well, and is scared of me leaving because of that. I have noticed she has been a bit clingy lately, and thought that something might be wrong. On the other hand, it might just be a result of me spending more time with her, I tend to analyze everything she does, looking for signs that she is in pain or doing better, and it might just all be in my head.

The other reason is the absurd noise levels coming from the builders next door. If that is the problem, I don`t blame her, it is pure hell. I haven`t noticed it much before, because they mainly work during the day on weekdays, when I`m at work and the dogs are at the sitters. But now that I`m home for a few days, I have got the full experience of it, and it is unbearable. I have a serious headache after half an hour. And the dogs have better hearing than me probably, and they ofcourse do not know what it is. For all they know, the building could be about to fall down.
The thing is though, this is where we live. The building people next door will be there for at least another year. If I am to be able to keep her, she will have to deal with the noise and stay home alone.

This is so incredibly depressing.