The Fears Keep Coming

And we're back to Mia being afraid of everything in the house.  Last night she was so upset by something that she wouldn't leave the office (her favorite room) but she was very frustrated by that.  She pulled her bed out of her crate and began to chew on the blanket and she even found a dryer sheet in there that she tore apart into a hundred pieces.  I was just a room over in the dining room making measurements for some wall hangings and she refused to come in and join me.  Normally no matter what I'm doing she'll make sure she's in the same room as me - watching, snoozing, or chewing a Nylabone.  I couldn't even get her to come into the family room to lay on the couch and watch tv with me, when it's one of her favorite hobbies.  Her fear of walking through the kitchen was just too much for her to handle, so I finally joined her in the office and surfed the internet for a while.  That wasn't fun for her either and she would lay in her crate with her eyes open and just stew over something.  I got down on the floor and tried to play with her and give her some good attention and even then she only seemed somewhat soothed.  Finally after hours of this weird behavior I thought maybe she needed some exercise, so I took her on a short night time walk.  The walk helped, but even that wasn't enough to calm her fears.  Getting her from the office to the deck (only a 7 foot walk through the kitchen) was a massive ordeal, it took her forever of crying and attempting to take one backwards baby step at a time.

I let her sleep on a dog bed in the bedroom last night, insisting that she couldn't join me in bed while Abe was out and it worked for an hour or so but around midnight I woke up to her standing on top of me.  This whole fear thing began on Thursday night so it was before we let her into the bed.  She is a creature of routine, so maybe there was something different that we did that day but it's causing her a ton of anxiety.  I've tried the whole "ignore it" and I've tried to sooth her through walking in the kitchen, but the only thing that really seems to work is letting it play out.  These little phases only tend to last a week or so, and eventually she's back to running all over the place without thinking twice about it.  I am pretty sure that this has to do with her being a rescue moreso than anything else, there must be something that goes on in her head that reminds her of scary things from her previous life.

Wimp.