Mia may need shrink

Salistra · Post by **Salistra** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 7:48 pm

Mia is a lovely Shitzu/Papillon mix - she favors the Shitzu. Potty training is up and down but we are hanging in there.

As I have stated before, Mia gets anxious around strangers but mostly with men. She seems to be doing better ... up until this past week.

Mia has a new thing now. She pees unexpectedly and it looks like to us it is from "fear" or "anxiety" and she only does it in the evening. First of all she looks tired and cranky. She plays alot with our Lab "Bunny" during the day.

Tonight our neighbor (who she knows), offered her a piece of hot dog through the fence of our patio deck. Keep in mind we have a weeved rail on our patio and view is obstructed but she can see if she looks through one of the gaps.

When I take Mia out in the garden, she runs right over to look for our neighbors. If they are there, she barks and growls and a simple "quiet" or "enough" from me or my husband and she looks at us and becomes quiet and then she is fine. But tonight he dropped a small piece of hot dog right in front of her and she peed on my foot (uggg)

I am having a very hard time trying to figure out her body language and where there is all coming from. Mia is 7 months. We've had her for 2 months now. She's very smart and learns other commands very quickly.

Because of Mia's fear we take her for short walks just to slowly acclimate her. We have a friend that takes our lab for longer walks without Mia. Now when the girl comes to take Bunny out, Mia grabs Bunny's back leg and yanks on it, growling. She's fine once bunny leaves for her walk but it's just the initial leaving her she gets like that.

Any suggestions of what is going on here? I am to the point I feel like Mia needs special assessment by a behaviorist but not sure if we can afford that and I don't know what to do.

Sorry to keep bothering you all about my little jigsaw puzzle.

Nettle · Post by **Nettle** » Sat Jun 20, 2009 3:54 am

Have her checked for UTI by the vet. Any change in peeing needs this check. Is she spayed? If not, she is the rigth age for a first season, which can cause more peeing temporarily because of the hormonal upsurge.

Then get down to her level and switch on your empathy. Think how terrifying a piece of hot dog coming through the fence looked to her. YOU knew what it was but to her it was a big shock.

You know when Bunny's walker is coming, so put Mia somewhere safe with a stuffed kong or something similar until Bunny has left. Sounds as if Mia relies on Bunny a lot and is scared of her leaving, so make time to do fun things with Mia on her own so that she relates more to you than the other dog.

She sounds a perfectly normal pup.

Salistra · Post by **Salistra** » Sat Jun 20, 2009 4:44 am

Thank you very much Nettle. Sometimes a person's vision becomes clouded when things happen in their own backyard.

I was raised with dogs all my life and I've never seen anything like this before.

So I guess the old saying "You learn something new everyday" comes into play here.

This was starting to freak me out and I knew it was starting to stress poor Mia out.

I just don't totally understand the potty-training progress. Mia has a good week and then it seems like she has a bad week. Up and down / back and forth. And she acts like we are going to beat the crap out of her but like I said, it seems this behavior only occurs in the early evenings. We would never hit any animal, it's just not in our nature to do that.

We had delayed spaying her per your advice back in May to allow her time to get adjusted to her new home life and get over some of her fears. Well I guess it's time

Thank you again