Dog OCD?

Our Aussie will lap the ping-pong table while we play.She'll do it till she's exhausted if we let her.I always attributed it to herding behavior.What happens if you block Zack's path?Does he become upset?Can he be distracted?

Tena

He will either stop and be okay, or he will fight to get around you to continue (by fight, i mean, try to push past you as best he can)

Absolutely -- Miss Kee is as obsessive as they come - or she is without her herbs!!  It's typically thot of to be a pre-seizurey sort of disorder - meaning, yes, it's closely alliied with seizures.  Can escalate into seizures. 

Honestly, this is where TCVM is awesome -- now the locator on the Chi Institute website is for the US, *but* under it is a sentence link for other countries and there are several in your area.

http://www.tcvm.com

When Kee came to us she was a mess -- she had this complicated repetoire of behaviors -- she'd crane her head up and right and lick, lick, lick then bob her head down, over and back up over the left shoulder, lick lick lick lick lick (like 5 times) then bob her head a couple of times and crane it back up to the right and repeat.

OVER AND OVER AND OVER. 

Or she'd dig at a spot in the carpet or lick some non-existant spot on the floor or on YOU.  Sometimes she'd cycle those behaviors. 

For a little dog who got bounced because her owner couldn't stay sober enough to keep a roof over her head, she sure was expensive.  But we got her teeth fixed and then started acupuncture.  We began to see some change -- we persisted and little by little she began to have real moments of clarity.  And about a year ago she had ... we *think* a major seizure while she was outside.  I just caught her on the end of it.  She was terrified. 

Dr. DiNatale changed her herbs for a bit and suddenly -- wow ... MORE clarity.  At this point she'll look you in the eye.  she's THERE.  She's actually present and accounted for mentally.  This is HUGE for this dog. 

She makes decisions now.    She relaxes.  She enjoys things. 

My point is -- if we can have success with a little dog who was majorly neglected and somewhat abused you'll be amazed at what the right herbs can do.  And the Chinese stuff truly does awesome things for seizures.  It's not always super fast, but it can be awesome.

 I think Amanda's Bevo has some OCD stuff going on from time to time - she may have some advice/insight too

Well, Kaiser sometimes does something similar. If he hasn't gotten a good amount of exercise, he will "pace" around the room...literally until you tell him to lay down. He has no goal, he's just walking. Have you noticed any sort of trend, like if he gets a good run in that day he doesn't do it? 

Bevo is an OCD dog. 

• He sucks his flanks, blanket, & teddy bear.  If I don't stop him, then he will suck his flanks until they are bloody.
• He obsessively straightens his blanket when it is wrinkled.  If I don't stop him, he bloodys his nose.
• He searched walls for hours after seeing a laser pointer on the wall.  ONE TIME.
• He will fixate on ceiling fans.
• He paces, always in the same pattern. (He comes off his bed, to the couch where he rests his head on the middle cushion, then over to the recliner where he rests his head on the left arm rest, then he steps up onto the hearth, takes two steps then steps down, & comes back to the couch to repeat.)

The biggest thing that I've learned from Bev is to stop the behavior immediately.  I know that, initially, OCD behavior is hilarious.  I will be the first to admit that I found Bevo's blanket straightening funny, & I allowed him to do it.  It wasn't until he woke me up in the middle of the night trying to "straighten"  me out of the bed, that I realized that we had a problem.  After discussing Bev's behaviors with his behaviorist, I became more diligent about managing his OCD behaviors.

She recommended that, as soon as I see him beginning to obsess, stop the behavior.  When Bev starts pacing, I call him over, & run him through a series of obedience commands.  It stops his pacing, & distracts him long enough for him to forget that he was pacing.  From experience...vary your distractions!  If you don't, you will likely be giving one more thing for him to obsess about.  (When I began distracting Bev, I would always call him to a front, & finish.  He's a smart boy, so he quickly started obsessing about it.  He would come running to me, front & finish, front, & finish, front & finish...  It wasn't a fun experience, & it was totally my fault!) 

With Bev, I've come to learn what triggers his obsessions, so I work to try to control his stressors.  He is very sensitive to my mood, so I have to be very careful not to come home stressed, or he starts stressing with me.  I also have to work to find a balance between under exercising, & over exercising him.  When under exercised, he paces.  When over exercised, he fixates on the ceiling fans.  He sucks out of stress.  If DH & I have an arguement, it is guaranteed that Bev is going to find something worthy of sucking on. 

In the end, it all comes down to management. 

I'm sorry that post is so long.  If you have any specific questions or need help with redirection ideas let me know. 

Many labs display OCD behavior. Belle is an exception. I think it is common in high energy, high drive dogs. If they don't have enough outlets, OCD sets in. 

Then there is Bevo. Boy Amanda you do have your hands full. 

True OCD is different from self-entertaining behaviors, but there is a blurry line between the two.  The question is, is the behavior responsive to increased attention, ie, more exercise and training, and redirection.  Not, 100% remediation necessarily, but is it better at all?  If so, then you dont have to have pharmaceutical help and your dog isn't necessarily in danger of seizure disorder down the road.  But, herbal therapy can definitely bridge the gap for these cases!  I encourage you to look into that.

In true OCD, there is a need for it to be treated much like seizure activity.  This is because the more the behavior occurs, the more it sets up the paths that allow it to happen - just like epilepsy.  Pharmaceuticals break that cycle - even if it's long enough , just a few months, to set ip new neural paths that are more constructive.

I had a blanket/paw/flank sucker, a Border Collie.  Her disorder could not be redirected, but it was related to how much exercise she got. 

We had another dog who was a light chaser.  He could not be redirected, nor could he be distracted with additional exercise.  But with a low dose of PB, he had a breakthrough and was gradually able to function in situations that would have been triggers - and after just six months didn't need the meds either.

One thing - don't give anti=anxiety meds to these dogs.  Some vets don't realize that these meds increase the connections in their brains and can create new behaviors like aggression, or increase the OCD, or even start seizure activity.