A story of hyperbehaviour, hypothyroidism, anal gland infection........ and two very determined owners.

Sacha is a handsome 6 yr old male standard poodle.

April ‘06   -    The Problem!

Sacha was brought to us with severe irritation of his anal glands. He was biting around the base of his tail and sniffing intensely at his bottom. Sacha was generally very nervous and hyper, jumping suddenly for no apparent reason, running restless from room to room, cocking his leg all over the place and being randy with Mrs S’s leg whenever she was on the phone. He was unmanageable on the lead, scared of bees and petrified of fireworks. But most of all he was very resistant to being handled by the owner, but especially by the vet. In the consulting room he panicked so dramatically when approached we were unable to touch him.
Our Initial Plan was :-
1. Anti-inflammatories to reduce the anal gland irritation
2. A calming hormone to settle him emotionally.
3. Neutering to reduce testosterone-driven hyper behaviour.
4. A detailed examination of his anal glands under general anaesthetic (at neutering).
5. A full behaviour assessment to work out how he related to his owners and how they could help him to become a calmer dog.
6. A Halti training session once he had become a little calmer. (A Halti helps a dog learn to be calm on a walk and follow the owner rather than pull).
7. A Blood Profile to assess his general health and check his thyroid levels.

The blood tests showed a low level of thyroid hormone which is associated with nervous behaviour.  Other blood tests were normal. The anal glands were inflamed and overfull. Sacha was neutered and made a good recovery. He was started on thyroid hormone tablets long term. We also started a course of  canine “prozac” to calm him during behavioural therapy over the next few months.

May ‘06   Full Behaviour Assessment

Both of Sacha’s owners agreed that they were of a nervous disposition and that probably wasn’t helping the situation. And that Sacha, Mr and Mrs were probably all winding each other up by the nervous tension that had developed around Sacha.

We worked out a detailed plan to establish some basic rules for everyone to follow, including how to stay calm and be assertive, reward good behaviour and ignore or reject hyper behaviour without reacting to it. The aim was to produce a more predictable calm home situation for Sacha.

Rules were established for: arriving and departing, structured play, entertaining and unpredictable walks. how to control jumping up, and how to get him to accept being handled.

June/July ‘06

Sacha was calming down at home, not jumping up as much, allowing Mrs S to take the phone without mounting her leg, but he was still showing irritation with his bottom. However, we were now able to examine him without a major panic and examine his anal glands properly. We continued to use anti-inflammatories to ease his discomfort.

August/Sept ‘06

Sacha was now allowing handling of his head enough for us to introduce a Halti head collar.

A training session to show Sacha’s owners how to use the Halti effectively went surprisingly well. Sacha was getting quite used to his visits to the surgery and was even giving us a welcome as we entered the room. Over the next few weeks steady progress was made on all fronts except the anal irritation. Sacha continued on thyroid treatment and on “prozac”.

October ‘06

Sacha was now emotionally stable. We decided to remove his abnormal anal glands. We had been deferring surgery until we felt he could cope well. The anal glands were removed successfully. For about a week after the operation he showed anal irritation, then it all stopped and he has been comfortable ever since. The “prozac” was stopped in Dec ’06.

June ‘07

Sacha doesn’t mind coming to the surgery now, he allows a thorough examination better than most of our patients! He is on thyroid hormone long term but no other medication. He is still quite afraid of loud noises so our next task is to de-sensitise him to fireworks, bees and other loud noises.

Sacha is lucky to have such caring loving owners with the patience and determination of saints.

Pet Health Insurance helped a lot as the overall cost of his treatment has been considerable.

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