Four years ago, life with Brandy was incredibly tough. Simple things like going for a walk felt completely impossible. She had severe dog reactivity – lunging and snarling whenever she saw another dog (“it’s the Hulk – run!!!” as I called her) alongside “stranger danger.” On top of that, she was terrified of fireworks and thunderstorms, to the point where we couldn’t leave her alone in the house in the evenings. We adjusted our whole lives around her fears, only walking her at the crack of dawn or really late at night (if at all) just to avoid triggers. We were working with a great force-free trainer who helped us a lot, but we eventually hit a wall. They ethically suggested that Brandy might need some clinical help, which is how we ended up contacting Sophie.

Looking back at everything we’ve done over the last four years, the progress Brandy has made is massive. It definitely wasn’t a quick fix, but a lot of step-by-step teamwork.

First, Sophie did a thorough analysis. Brandy was already on some pain medication at the time, but with Sophie’s knowledge, we adjusted the treatment to something that worked much better for her. We’d seen a physio before without much luck, but this time, getting her pain properly managed made a noticeable difference in her behaviour.

To help lower her baseline anxiety and support her behaviour modification plan for her reactivity, noise sensitivity, and fears, we also started her on fluoxetine. It made a huge difference in helping her cope with the world and allowed us to slowly reintroduce short, local walks without everyone being on edge.

We also found new physiotherapists that Brandy actually likes seeing. The work we’ve done with them has been so successful that we’ve been able to reduce her pain medication to the point where she doesn’t need it anymore, unless she has a rare flare-up.

Slowly, all the hard work started to pay off. Over the last two years, her reactivity has improved to the point where she has made two dog friends on her walks, and she even made friends during group classes with Sophie. Although she can still struggle sometimes in certain contexts with other dogs, we are now able to walk past a dog on the other side of the street 99% of the time without having to manage her, and she’s even better if we’re in a field.

Her walks are pretty much brilliant now, which is a relief, because she used to completely refuse to go out with just myself or my partner. She insisted it had to be a joint effort, meaning the only way she was going out was if the three of us went together. We had to rearrange our morning schedules to make it happen, and while it was nice to have that “compulsory” family bonding time at 6:00 AM, it meant that if our schedules didn’t match up, Brandy simply couldn’t go out. Thankfully, those days are behind us. We have just hit a 100-week streak of taking her out at least five times a week (yes, I initially used a Habit Tracker to make sure we do them), but over the last year, it’s been every single day. For the last six months, I’ve been able to take her on our full routes completely on my own with zero issues, and she doesn’t get “stuck” anymore. Even better, over the last three months, she’s been going out for evening walks too, and she actually wants to go.

The biggest news is that Brandy is now completely off the fluoxetine. We started the reduction plan with Sophie and our vet back in November, right around Bonfire Night. We were worried that starting a medication reduction during peak firework season might cause a massive setback, but Brandy surprised us. She coped with the noise better than we ever could have imagined (we still had management in place), which just proved to us that all the work we’d put in had truly paid off and she didn’t need the extra support anymore. It took a few months from that point and two months ago she took her very last dose.
We wanted to see how she’d cope now that she’s more confident in the world, and it has gone incredibly well. Her noise sensitivity has reduced, she’s happily interacting with people in our lives, and she just seems to be happy.

But honestly, one of the biggest shifts was in our own mindset. We learned to accept certain things as just part of her character, rather than a problem that needed fixing. Accepting what she likes and doesn’t like made a huge difference to all of our stress levels.
We still have our challenges sometimes, but we coexist nicely now and life is good. Having such a solid, predictable baseline for her behaviour is great. Because we know exactly how she feels when she is comfortable, it makes it so much easier for us to identify if anything is wrong when her behaviour suddenly changes for the worse.

A huge thank you to our original trainer, our vets, her physio, and a massive thank you to Sophie (and Leigh-Ann) for getting us to this point.