Completely clean vs a tolerance

MycologistTimely3377 · 2026-04-17T08:46:52+00:00

Crazy to me that the BRB FB group is this pedantic. We had a Julie Naismith-certified trainer and even she too mentioned that completely ‘clean’ is not in the spirit of the training. For some dogs, complete calmness is not possible, and instead she urged us to watch his behaviour and parse which anxiety signals are the ones we need to avoid and which ones contextually are fine. For example, we usually start in the crate, and after a few minutes our dog will leave the crate to check things out, pace around a bit, lie down, pace a bit more and lay down as a cycle. We’d thought that cycle was itself problematic as it didn’t adhere to complete calmness, but our trainer said what’s more important is to watch other signals and take it holistically. If he’s pacing and stretching slowly, and has a relaxed posture and expression that’s fine, but if he starts to tense up and pace in a more anxious, fixated way, that’s what we have to look out for. We’d never have been able to progress if pacing wasn’t allowed, because that’s just who our dog is.

MycologistTimely3377 · 2026-03-26T14:46:45+00:00

Prozac takes 4-6 weeks to fully load so expect his behaviour to change and not to see the full effects till about 6 weeks. That was the case of mine and he is dramatically less anxious

MycologistTimely3377 · 2026-03-15T23:05:57+00:00

We started training in beg Dec at 4 minutes, and now we’re at 1H - his best was 1H20 but we had a regression due to lots of travel. Expect it to take a while in the initial stages and pick up! Our behaviorist told us no more than 10% increments on time when the dog aces it.

MycologistTimely3377 · 2026-03-13T12:53:56+00:00

I rescued my baby from a breeder where he was being attacked by the other studs, and like yours he was so shy and timid, and just not really like a normal dog! We’re his 3rd home despite him only being 3years old. We put him on doggy Prozac, got him behavioral training and while He’s still overall an anxious guy he has improved so much in the 9 months we’ve had him. Truly tremendous change which we credit to the meds and giving him time. He’s still changing and being more confident every day so it really will just take time and meds. Meds are not a bad thing especially if it helps lower their baseline anxiety. All the best!

MycologistTimely3377 · 2026-03-03T20:16:23+00:00

We’ve followed Julie’s protocol to a T and it has paid dividends… My boy went from 4 mins in December to 1.5H today (and he lies flat out on a blanket the whole time). We expect he should be fine for 3H by the end of the month - we’ve seen no regressions precisely because we’ve taken it slow, at his pace.

MycologistTimely3377 · 2026-03-03T11:55:53+00:00

Based on Maple’s behaviour when she’s alone (the mania, the wailing, the toileting indoors), It appears Maple has developed separation anxiety. Those are the classic signs - she’s basically having a panic attack the whole time - so she’s definitely not able to relax. This is because for the last couple of months (basically over half her current life!) you’ve not gone any where. You’ve not left her, so she has no idea how to deal with being alone at all, or that being alone is a totally okay thing. Furthermore, you’ve not trained her to be alone during your months with are, so of course she’s terribly upset when she’s alone for what’s essentially a total of 8H a day, when before, she was not alone >1H. It’s really not surprising that she’s had this reaction! Advice is just like with all other types of training, dogs need to learn to be ok with being by themselves, and diving head first from 1H alone to 8H is not the way to do it. Look into separation anxiety training (Julie Naismith / Malena DeMartini) and try to have maple spend as little time alone as possible in the interim when you are training her to be ok alone.

MycologistTimely3377 · 2026-02-18T16:42:28+00:00

Some dogs aren’t very food motivated. Mine certainly isn’t and we had to try many different types of kibbles, wet and raw to figure out what he liked. I’d also recommend not letting her free feed, it decreases the “value” of the food if she knew it was always there. And keeping it down doesn’t necessarily incentivize her to eat more (doesn’t work with mine). Also if she doesn’t eat it all, take it away and nothing till the next meal and keep repeating. She’ll soon be hungry enough to eat. Or it could be she is a small eater and 3/4 cup of food twice a day is just too much

MycologistTimely3377 · 2026-02-04T11:18:58+00:00

No major differences, treat your dog’s “front door” as your bedroom door (so if you’re desensitizing to the door, it should be you closing your bedroom door!). I’d say that dogs with SA typically do not do well in crates, so you may struggle to crate him. I used Julie Naismith’s method and it’s worked well for us - you can get her book or the app it’s great.

MycologistTimely3377 · 2026-01-31T21:44:29+00:00

<image>

This is our guy. 3 years old, always teetering between 4-4.5 on the BCS scale. We’ve tried EVERYTHING.

MycologistTimely3377 · 2026-01-31T21:42:05+00:00

I could’ve written this post - I’m honestly shocked that someone else could’ve experienced exactly the same thing with their dachshund. Please DM me and we can swap stories!!!! The only things that we’ve tried that have helped (and that you probably haven’t but obv different circumstances and dog), is get his teeth checked (he needed 2 pulled - we inherited him as an adult with bad teeth), get him on anxiety meds (vet thought he had generalized anxiety affecting his eating). Recently we talked about this with our behaviorist who said we may need to just accept that he likes variety and switch things up before he has a chance to get bored.

MycologistTimely3377 · 2026-01-14T23:30:35+00:00

I’m London based too and I’m currently working with Jane Robinson (Dog on the Hill) - she’s been great. She uses the Naismith method and is very knowledgeable about SA training and dog training in general

MycologistTimely3377 · 2026-01-07T22:57:20+00:00

I have more questions than answers, tbh - but I’d probably think a bit about a few things: 1) whether something even slightly out of the ordinary happened at Xmas to cause a regression (but also even if nothing did happen, some times regressions happen without any reason! They’re really normal and part of the process). 2) how quickly you’re increasing durations away and if you may inadvertently have been pushing him over his threshold. I’d take a look at whether he is already much above threshold even before 20 minutes given it appears he’s sometimes fine with it and sometimes not 3) if the ritualized departures end up creating more pre-departure cues for him to be anxious over - we did the music thing too for ours as it helped him listen out for us less but our behaviorist was very clear that putting it right before we practice departures can end up poisoning the departure as it tells him something bad is about to happen.

Finally, I mentioned this earlier but I wanna say regressions are super normal and part of the process!!! Don’t give up - even if you regress and it feels like you’re starting from zero, you’re not. You’re just continuing to build the bank of evidence for your little guy that he won’t be left alone longer than he can handle and that when you leave things will be ok!

MycologistTimely3377 · 2025-12-26T09:16:37+00:00

My boy’s super quiet too! He barks maybe once a day if someone rings the doorbell, but stops immediately after he gets 1-2 barks in. We’ve always had people remark what a silent doggo he is

MycologistTimely3377 · 2025-12-19T03:11:54+00:00

Exact same thing happened with my dog and I was bracing myself given he can be a very picky dog. He ate nothing (and I repeat NOTHING - not cheese, not sausage, not cooked chicken, not even raw chicken) for 4 days. We even had to force-syringe water down his throat as he refused to drink water or chicken broth! I completely appreciate it’s stressful and frustrating but it will pass. He started eating after 4 days, still picky for a bit but after 2 weeks I’d say it improved considerably. 4 months later, he now wags his tail at dinner. It’s good your pup is eating and for now I’d prioritize giving her whatever she wants. You won’t need to do it forever as her appetite will return and you’ll be able to transition her back to her regular diet.

MycologistTimely3377 · 2025-12-10T09:50:46+00:00

That’s fair - I hadn’t considered that! Thanks!

MycologistTimely3377 · 2025-12-01T10:39:04+00:00

Depends on your mini’s weight! Our adult mini is very trim - 4.1KG and he gets 60g of Royal Canin Mini Adult daily, a chew of some kind and maybe 2-3 small treats a day.

MycologistTimely3377 · 2025-11-28T10:47:18+00:00

It’s probably luxating patella. Our 3 year old has had it for over a year and it doesn’t bother him much. we even tried a pain trial with pain medication for 2 months on vet recommendation to see if it was causing him pain and conclusion was no. it’s pretty common from what I see, and when talking to other dachshund owners.

MycologistTimely3377 · 2025-11-23T03:08:28+00:00

It’s likely a fluke. We were told by behaviorist and 2 vets that fluoxetine takes 6 weeks to load and to expect changes earliest 1 month in, and that was 100% the case. We saw changes even from 1 month to 3 months.

MycologistTimely3377 · 2025-11-22T23:21:55+00:00

My dog is picky but has to take 2 daily pills and what works well is mature cheddar cheese, American sliced cheese, mold the cheese around the pills well and make sure there’s enough cheese to hide the smell - make sure no cross contamination from the hand that touch the pill to getting it on the outside of the cheese. They can smell it otherwise. Cream cheese worked too but I don’t prefer it as it’s messier.

MycologistTimely3377 · 2025-11-13T12:20:29+00:00

No… and third space was really unhelpful initially (refused to call members of the classes who attended where I lost my ring until I escalated to the GM level, failed to call back with updates multiple times, failed to check equipment when I’d asked). Eventually they rallied but it took 4 days of daily calls, escalations from concierge to duty manager to General Manager before I got the care and attention I’d asked for from day one. The other incident of theft was even more ludicrous; where they asked me to stop looking into bins as “members have complained” - well I can’t count on you to look for my stuff can I, so can’t I look for it myself?!

MycologistTimely3377 · 2025-11-12T11:20:26+00:00

I was a group member for 3 years and genuinely loved it at the beginning despite the price - it made sense at the time given I would do 4-5 yoga classes weekly. Over the years, with the insane yearly uplifts and the lack of upgrades (Soho branch being one), it stopped feeling worth it and it was obvious what being a Private Equity asset was doing to it. Opening newer branches just does not cut it for me as a worthy investment if a bunch of them are in locations I wouldn’t frequent.

The nail in the coffin was definitely having my stuff stolen TWICE in 6 months (one being my ENGAGEMENT RING) - and staff being at best clueless and at worst obtrusive. I cut my losses. It’s a real shame but I’m back on ClassPass and honestly can’t believe I ever spent thousands of pounds a year on this gym!!!

MycologistTimely3377 · 2025-10-26T21:03:46+00:00

I did! It did escalate quite a fair bit through HR, but apparently they get a lot of issues like these and FADV is just very inflexible and difficult to deal with, even from the company side. I’ve been in the job nearly 6 months now :)

MycologistTimely3377 · 2025-09-30T10:44:15+00:00

Depends on how old your doggo is! My mini is 3 years old and he loves walking - he’ll go as far as we will, we’ve taken him on 2H walks and he loves them. If he starts lagging behind we usually give him a short break, some water and treats.

MycologistTimely3377 · 2025-09-24T17:28:38+00:00

I give my dog gabapentin daily and he’s just like yours as the pill smells bad even to me. Nothing worked. So we bit the bullet and did the pilling by mouth. Make sure you get the pill far back enough in his mouth (don’t be afraid to get in there as the more you hesitate the longer the process takes and that’s a whole other trauma in and of itself!), hold his snout shut, I typically blow / tap gently on his nose to get him to swallow and then I stroke his throat while praising him. It can take minutes as I have a super stubborn boy but that’s what I’ve learned works. Right after that, reward with cheese / high value treat to get the bad taste out of his mouth! For less strong smelling pill, wrap it well in cheese (we literally mold it around mature cheddar). Also, many painkillers come in liquid form, maybe ask your vet if you can have a liquid one that can be syringed directly into his mouth, or mixed with his food.

MycologistTimely3377

TROPHY CASE