From bad to worse

I haven't blogged recently because I haven't been working with Harley. All I'm trying to do right now is survive Harley. For the most part, when Harley is in the house and out of his kennel, he is biting me. So, he's been spending a lot of time outside or in his kennel. Thankfully the weather has been nice and he can be outside more of the time. His biting is now at the ridiculous stage. It's like it's the only way he knows of to communicate with me. He usually starts by flea biting my legs, around my knee caps. Then he'll start going for my stomach and arms. I'm supposed to turn away from him but that just makes it worse. I'm doing that though. When I get up to remove myself from the situation he follows after me and attacks my back. If I try to walk out of the room, he just grabs onto my arm and clamps down. All of this biting is frustrating me and making me want to cry.

I sent a whiny email to Jennie last night. I was so frustrated I didn't know what else to do. I'm desperate for something to change or improve. I'd have to say that this is the worst it's ever been with Harley. My arm is bruised and cut in two places, small cuts but cuts nonetheless. I want to walk Harley but all he does is go after the leash or after me. Walks are terribly frustrating. Most days we're not making it out the door. I feel like I've failed Harley. I'm obviously doing something that is contributing to his behavior. He doesn't act this way with David. Just with me.

I'm still considering going back to school this summer but the worse Harley gets the more I think that trying to get school work done at home will be impossible. He goes after my laptop when I'm trying to use it. He bites at the power supply at the back of the laptop and he licks the keyboard. Very bizarre behavior. He'll also stick his nose under the laptop and try to push it off my lap. I just want a normal dog who can lay around sometimes and give me a break. I feel like I'm on call every minute of the day when Harley is up. Changing his attention seeking behavior is proving to be much more difficult than I thought it would be. He is totally rebelling against me turning away from him or not giving him attention when he demands it.

It was so bad yesterday that all I could think about was not having Harley. I love him. I would miss him, but I don't think I can stand one more bite. My arm hurts all the time now because of him biting and clamping down on it. I must be the runt of the litter and Harley is always putting me in my place. That's the way it feels anyway. I know that I just need to be purposeful with Harley to get him to start acting better. I can't give up or give in because then he'll know that he's won and then it will never get better.

One of the things I'm hoping for is for the Prozac to kick in any time now. The DAP collar isn't doing a thing, at least not that I can tell. The Prozac could still have weeks to start kicking in. In the mean time, I'm frustrated, bruised, cut and feeling hopeless. I'm also very annoyed. He bites me all the time. He's got to weigh about 65 pounds now and fending off a dog that size isn't easy. And he's only going to get bigger.

~sigh~ I just don't know what to do. I feel like I need to start over with everything that Dr. J told me to to and not move forward until he is very comfortable with what we are currently working on. He seems to be frustrated by having to work with me. He's become very obstinate too. I have a hard time getting him to do anything he doesn't want to do because he sits down or lays down and rolls over so he doesn't have to do what I need him to do. He's playing this game with me now that when I come to the door to let him in, he walks away. I'm getting tired of that game pretty quick. I know I'm just going to have to persevere and continue to work with him. What alternative do I have? I think that if someone else would take him, I would gladly give him up. At least that's how I feel right now after him biting me all day yesterday. There are moments though, when he's not biting me, that I look in his face and know that he's my dog and we were meant to be together. I just don't know if we're meant to be together for the long haul.

If he was like this with everyone, I wouldn't feel as bad but he doesn't do this to David. He is overly aggressive playing with other dogs though. He hasn't played with another dog for months now because I can't trust him to behave. Because he's getting bigger, he's getting harder to control. Honestly, I just don't want to spend my whole day fending off a dog. I can't relax with him anymore. I know that I need to get up later this morning and just take him for a walk around the cul de sac for at least a half an hour to get some of the pent up energy out of him. I can't get the gentle leader on him by myself though. But I'm not going to use that as an excuse. I can just hook one of the chain leashes to his collar and get him out there. I've got to do something or I'm going to lose what little of my sanity that I have left.

One thing that's I've noticed since he's been on the Prozac is that he's less interested in eating and treats. I used to be able to distract him by giving him a bison bone but as much as he loves them he has seemed to figure out that a bison bone means I'm not paying attention to him. He's not eating his kibble very much which renders the Buster Cubes and Tug a Jug obsolete. I can't leave him with a black Extreme Kong because he takes those apart now. All of the compressed rawhide sticks I got for him are all gone. He went through 10 of them already. I'm really starting to think that I need to get some blood work done on him to see if there isn't some underlying cause for all of this.

So, here I am at 3:30 in the morning, up because it's the only time I can do anything without Harley going after me. I'm so grateful that Harley sleeps through the night and isn't up too early in the morning. I'm going to do my best to not approach this day with dread but to instead approach it with hope. Maybe yesterday was the worst "getting worse before it gets better" day. Maybe today will be different somehow. I don't believe that but I can still hope for it.

Harley has been the biggest challenge of my life. I've dealt with lots of things in my almost 50 years but this has to be one of the most frustrating, annoying and hopeless situations that I've ever come across. I'm just glad that I love Harley and can still see sweetness in there somewhere. Otherwise, I don't know how he or I would survive this.

So that's it for right now. I'm going to go back to bed and hopefully sleep for a while before Harley wakes up. Then I'll start all over again with him. What else can I do?