Earlier this month, the dogs and I spent a week hunkered down in the basement all day, every day. Our main floor was being painted, and our furniture and books were crammed onto the front porch, which I feared might fall off the house from the weight of it all.
The basement is not a bad place to work — my desk is in front of a sunny egress window that looks up at the garden, and at the time I could see our bright orange Mexican sunflowers waving against the October-blue sky. (They are now collapsed under snow.)
For the dogs' comfort, we hauled down one crate and the big dog bed that Doug calls "the raft," so of course Angus and Rosie spent the days snoozing, instead, on the basement couch.
I worried that such a drastic change of location would make Angus an anxious mess, but everything went surprisingly smoothly. The weather allowed us to keep the side door open, and the dogs raced out into the backyard whenever they felt like it. And although they occasionally barked when they heard the painter moving around, mostly they were calm.
This was, I think, thanks to medication.
Last month, I wrote about how, after years of trying all sorts of alternatives, I finally made the decision to put Angus on anti-anxiety medication.
That column provoked a huge response — many, many readers wrote to share stories of their own dogs' anxiety; a few psychics and dog communicators got in touch, wanting to help; and two readers wrote to caution me against drugs. They thought Angus' anxiety came from things I could change — his diet, vaccinations and flea pills, or invisible waves of "electropollution" from our electronic devices.
But mostly, readers in droves wanted to know what drug Angus was on. A lot of you sounded like you were nearing the end of the rope with your own anxious dogs, and you wanted help.
