My problems with Snoopy - Advice needed

My mood has not been good this week. I have been short-tempered with everybody at work, home, everywhere. I think it might be the change of season or maybe the fact that it's darker earlier in the evening and I feel like I don't have as much time to accomplish everything.

I know a HUGE part of my mood is my dog Snoopy (7 year old beagle/basset hound mix). Her anxiety level is through the roof. She is great all day but starts panicking as soon as we shut the lights off to go to bed. It started a couple of years ago when she was scared of thunder which isn't unusual for dogs. Then we figured she must have attributed rain to the thunder so then she was afraid when it would only rain, which is pretty frequently in the spring and fall. Then it was wind that she was afraid of in addition to all the rest.

At this point, I took her to the vet to see what they could do to help me. The vet prescribed a medication to help ease her anxiety. That worked to level her out overall, but it didn't help on those nights with rain/wind/thunder. So I took her back to the vet last fall when they prescribed a sedative to use during those nights. It worked well at the time.

Last year, she became terrified of new noises or changes in the house. Last fall, we replaced our carpet with hardwood flooring and it took her months to get used to that. It was to the point this past spring that we were going to find her a new home because we just couldn't handle her anxiety.

We decided to see how she was during the summer at the campground because she hadn't handled it well the summer before. This summer, she was as good as gold. You couldn't find a better dog at the campground, but she wouldn't carry that same demeanor home with her. So our weeknight sleeping was spotty at best.

Now with the new furnace we installed this summer with its new noises, she had started waking at 3-4am every night and whining and pacing until we get up for the day. Then as soon as we're up, she will go find her bed and lay down and sleep. On these nights, I've tried ignoring her, going to her, being strict with her, being affectionate with her, and no method seems to work. Not to mention that I just don't have the patience to deal with her when I've been woken up in the middle of the night. The medication doesn't seem to help anymore either. I give her the sedative before bed just so we can all get some sleep, and she's pacing when the lights are turned off and she won't settle down.

Clay and I got fed up again a couple of weeks ago and we did find somebody else who was willing to take her, but I chickened-out at the last minute. I figure she is our dog and we should be the ones to help her. I couldn't shake the guilt that I felt about giving her away.

So I really started working with her to improve the nights. I bought books and new leashes for training and I swear, Cesar Millan from the Dog Whisperer on National Geographic channel is my new favourite TV show! In the 2 weeks, she is doing much better with the furnace noise during the day, but we've had to resort to having her spend her nights in the garage so that we can all get some sleep. My current plan is to try the garage nights for a couple of more weeks and then introduce her back to the house while we're babysitting my parents' dog for 2 weeks so they can both be in the house. She always does much better when the 2 of them are here. I sometimes wonder if having a second dog might help her behaviour, but I just can't take the chance of getting another one and being wrong because I really don't want the full-time responsibility of another dog. Anyway, I wrote an entire book about my issue with Snoopy and what I could really use is some suggestions on how others might deal with this.

October 2008 update

We are well into fall now. I intended to get some fall family pictures done, but we have been busy and never got around to it. Now, it's quite cold out so I doubt we will get them done. I might see if we could do them this weekend but we are supposed to get snow flurries on Wednesday, so it could be wet.

Preschool and tap dancing are going very well. Makayla loves both of the activities. I work very close to my house, Makayla's sitter's house and the preschool. I had intended to bring Makayla to work with me in the morning and take her to preschool then pick her up when it's over, however, I didn't realize how much of my job seems to take me away from the office on the preschool days (Tuesdays and Thursdays). I have had to get my neighbour whose son goes to the same preschool to take Makayla to preschool at least twice since it started a month ago and when neither she nor I could take the kids one day, they had to miss a class. This week was supposed to be fine, but then something got cancelled on Monday and rescheduled for Thursday at 11am when I'm supposed to be picking Makayla up. I believe that my neighbour can get her that day though. I just hadn't intended for my neighbour to have to help me so much. Thank goodness we're pretty good friends too.

Makayla can now count to 20 without getting mixed up at 15 like she used to. She loves manipulating numbers. She always counts how many kids are at the sitters in the morning then she will break it down to how many girls and how many boys. She has started to ask me about addition, like she will ask "how many is 4 and 4?" I explained how she could use her fingers to add up the numbers and she has started using this technique. She likes the alphabet too and even tries to spell some words. She knows CAT, DOG, YES, NO, MAKAYLA, JOSH. I can't determine if she is going to be right- or left-handed. She can write her name equally well with either hand and she doesn't seem to favour one over the other whether she is writing or eating. I guess time will tell.

Her favourite word lately is "actually" and her favourite colour is light blue. I can't count how many times she's told me that her "favourite colour is blue, ACTUALLY it's light blue". She can now dress and undress herself. Some shirts give her some difficulty going over her head, but overall I can get her some clothes and she can get them on. I did catch her getting frustrated with her pants the other day when she said "Oh, these friggin' pants!" Not cute. I will watch my mouth more carefully from now on.

Makayla and I went to a Thomas the Train live show this weekend. It was quite a pricy event and to be honest, it wasn't that good. If my neighbour and her son hadn't been going, I probably wouldn't have gotten tickets since Makayla isn't a huge Thomas fan. My neighbour purchased the tickets back in May and we got 3rd row floor seats. The seats were awful. You would think that sitting that close, you would have no trouble to see. I wished we had been sitting in the stands because I know the kids would have actually been able to see the show without having to stand on their chairs to see over the adults heads. It was extremely loud too. As soon as the show started, you could hear some kids around us start wailing because they were scared of how loud it was. Overall, the show was too expensive and not very entertaining. Makayla seemed to enjoy it though and that was the main reason for going.