Langley's Transformation

I've always said that likely much of Langley's issues were that our home was not a good fit for him. It's something I always try to stress to adopters - the very most important thing in choosing a dog for your family is to make sure that their personality and needs are a good match to your own. If not, both the dog and the humans are going to be pretty miserable and that's not fair.

Langley's been in his new home for about 3 weeks now and from all the reports I've gotten he's been doing incredible: he has doggy friends, he goes to the dog park to play, he takes the occasional visit to pet stores with his dad, he gets multiple walks each day, and he even sleeps through the night in bed with his dad now. A far cry from the compulsive mess that I was working with back in 2012. Heck, he's a far cry from the dog who left here 3 weeks ago.

His new dad is getting ready to retire and move to his island cabin, but as work winds down, he was scheduled for one last business trip that would take him out of state. Because I was concerned about Langley being boarded, I had told his dad when Langley was first adopted that Troy and I would be happy to dogsit Langley for him since I thought that a boarding kennel would really be tough for him. So on Sunday Langley arrived for a 12 day stay.

While I didn't think that his dad was lying about Langley's new persona, I had lived with Langley for over a year in his former neurotic state so it was tough for me to imagine this new and improved version of Langley. Seeing is believing though. We met Langley and his dad at a dog park in our town for the handoff and Langley had actually been in the park tearing around and playing when we got there. On leash he excitedly, greeted three very fat spaniels who were much bigger than him. No reactive growling or lunging, no frenetic pacing. Just slightly excited but very proper butt sniffs between the dogs. Even when surrounded by the 3 spaniels milling around him off leash while he was on leash, he kept his cool. OMG!

And it gets better. He is down from 15 mg daily of fluoxetine (an SSRI drug for anxiety - generic Prozac) to 10 mg without any noticeable uptick in anxious behavior or compulsion according to his dad.

And beyond that, the lower stress looks good on him - his coat is much shinier than it was here with me, in spite of the good food and skin and coat supplements I fed him, and his hair loss issue around his ears has finally cleared up. Anxiety is hard on one's health.

So am I just not good with anxious dogs? No, I don't think that was the issue. I have a lot of experience working with fearful dogs and on top of the experience have taken a lot of classes to try to add to my knowledge. The truth I want you to take away from this is that you can be the most knowledgeable dog person in the world - way smarter than me and full of experience and know how - and you still might not be a good fit for a dog because of the life you lead, your energy level, or the other dogs in your home. Langley came a long way at our house but he had plateaued because I couldn't be what he really needed to reach his full potential.

Video above is of Langley getting reintroduced to Chima and Salinas. He was completely unphased - at the time because he was too busy hunting for poop.

So kudos to his dad for being willing to take a chance on what was a somewhat neurotic and frenetic dog but who has turned into a healthy and beloved, albeit energetic, dog. He believed me when I told him "this is an amazingly sweet dog - you will not find a sweeter dog" even though Langley puked in his driveway upon first meeting him, peed in his house and then proceeded to tear around and pace for most of that first meeting. He stuck with the adoption process even after being grilled by me about his choice of trainers, and receiving email after email with links to Websites with behavioral information.  And because he stuck with us he has discovered that I was not lying and cherishes Langley for the amazing dog that he truly is.