04 September 2011

On not getting any rain from TS Lee, and how my poor little Mollie is weathering it

Here in my neck of the woods, on Caddo Lake in East Texas, we have only gotten clouds and a constant light wind off of Tropical Storm Lee. I'm enjoying the cooler temperatures, and the breeze feels nice.

However, my poor little Mollie puppy
does not like bad weather or wind. She has barked non-stop since Friday morning when we started getting the wind off of TD13, before it got named Lee.

Friday, all that barking was utterly annoying. Yesterday (Saturday), it was getting on my last fucking nerve. Until a gust came along that rocked the magic bus a little bit and popped the awning rather loudly. This sent her into a frenzy, so I picked her up to calm her, and her poor little heart was about to pound through her tiny little ribcage.

I got a bit worried, because I knew she had been barking for over 24 hours and we had at least a couple of days of this left to go. So I called the vet to ask what should I do, and their response was to bring her in for an exam and possible meds. Like we can afford that.
Local friends recommended benadryl to calm her because that is what the vet would give her anyway, so there I went to figure out how to do this.

You could tell it had been a very long time since I had done any dope. I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to get that damned benadryl capsule open to get to the medicinal powder inside to give her a small amount.
Once I got it open, I had the most difficult time making four "lines" out of the powder so that I could give her a quarter of a capsule or less. I mean, she only weighs 11.5 pounds, so a whole 25 milligrams would probably kill her or some shit.

I finally got a small amount of the powder into a wad of peanut butter and got it in her. She calmed down quite a bit.

The problem with this is that I do NOT like the idea of doping my dog.

Anybody out there got any suggestions for how to calm my poor puppy when we have bad weather or lots of wind that don't involve doping her?

7 comments:

  1. i used to dope my dog with ace promozine (sic) when thunderstorms rolled in. don't feel bad. it helps them. before i got the prescription of ace, i used a natural root remedy i got at a local pet store to calm them. it was much cheaper and didn't work as well as the ace but it had some calming effects. i don't know the name of the root as it was several years ago.
    i know it's tough to watch our animals stress.

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  2. I'm going to have to try something new. Even the benadryl doesn't seem to be working well this afternoon. I'm afraid her heart is going to explode. (Either that or my eardrums.)

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  3. First of all, shit she is cute! And second of all, poor Mollie!
    Don't feel bad for doping her if it helps. I did see this on the internets. Hope something works or the weather clears up soon!
    http://www.wusa9.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=86398&catid=258

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  4. The poor girl, she has really been scared.

    I don't have any wisdom on this, but I don't think you should feel bad - you did what you needed to do to help her feel better.

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  5. I read that story, and will be looking for some of that stuff in spray form. Thank you for the tip!
    Update: she is still a bit barky & nervous but not as frenzied as she was. I don't know if she's just "adjusted to a new normal" or figured out it might be OK after all, but I'm grateful either way.

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  6. Oh, so sad! My dog doesn't like weather either (and he really doesn't like the toddler - major anxiety attacks). The only thing that really helps is holding him tight and giving him a good cuddle. I hope she feels better!

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  7. She's lots better now, the winds have finally died down.

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