Swiss Lick Swissies

Anxiety Help

Monday, March 8th, 2010 | Indigo | No Comments

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we’ve been trying an herbal tonic, specifically Calm Down Herbal Tonic, to work on Indy’s anxiety around people. We’ve been putting in her food pretty steadily for over a week leading up to our block’s progressive dinner party on Saturday hoping for a calmer reaction to people.

Did it work?

Honestly, I’m not sure. She’s previously met all the people who were at our house. But with the exception of two of the people, she doesn’t see any of them with any amount of regularity. They came in, she barked. The proceeded to the kitchen to eat and drink and pretty much ignored her. (Nice thing was, we didn’t even need to ask them to ignore her. They just did it. SMRT!) We only had people over for about 40 minutes, so she never really had a chance to get used to them and calm down completely, but she did stop barking as soon as they walked away. She wandered around with her ears back in nervous position and sniffed bums. Every once in a while she’d start barking a little, but would stop with a reassuring word from Dan or myself.

I can’t decide whether or not it helped. It definitely wasn’t the miracle cure I was hoping for, but I knew that wasn’t a realistic expectation. But was the improvement due to being hopped up on an herbal solution? Or was it the people completely ignoring her? I just don’t know. It’s worth trying again at another event, so we definitely will give it another go.

Stay tuned!

Tags: Greater Swiss Mountain Dog, Indy the Swissy, Swissy