Thinking and greeting (at the same time)

Foster puppy Xena gets so excited to see me that her brain temporarily overheats and shuts off. This results in her barking hysterically, leaping through the air, spinning in circles, and smashing into everything in the immediate vicinity until she cools off a bit. I've been patiently addressing this issue for weeks now and it has only gotten worse.

Standard Arriving Home Procedure:
1. If dogs are loose in house, wait outside until barking/flailing ceases.
2. Walk in the door and ignore dogs while putting down bag, keys, etc.
3. Continue to ignore dogs until barking/flailing ceases.
4. If Xena is crated, wait until she is quiet and offering a sit before letting her out.

It's not working. She is not getting any less hysterical when I arrive home. She still takes 30-60 minutes to chill the **** out enough for me to let her out of her crate. Sometimes I don't even have that long to wait before I need to leave again, and then I have to pick whether to release the beast or just leave her crated for a few more hours until I can try again.

I am getting very, very tired of being barked at and clawed furiously every time I get home or let her out of the crate. She's way to excited to take treats or really do much of anything in this state, so I'm running out of ideas. I don't want to walk in the door and immediately squirt bottle her into submission, but I really need her to be less of a tornado. Where am I going wrong here?

Will she take food or play with toys when she's like that?

Nope, else I'd have a way to focus or redirect her. When she's in greetsanity mode she just flings herself around obliviously.

I would immediately walk back out the door if she does that. Most dogs will respond to being ignored and catch on quicker, but this sounds like a serious trigger for her, so I think you need to be a little more intense. If possible I'd avoid the squirt bottle (you don't want to make her hate when you come home).

I'd walk in, if she's barking, turn right back around, shut the door til she's calm/quiet. Come in, repeat. You might have to do this ten times in a row the first 2-3 times, but eventually she'll shut up long enough to give you a wtf are you doing? Look. Mark and reward that, as fast as possible. It might be a couple of PITA long training sessions, but I've never seen a dog not catch onto that within a handful of tries.

She is currently banished to her crate in the bedroom after bodyskamming furniture and breaking stuff an hour ago. She has been hyperventilate-whining and barking intermittently for the entire hour. Every time she hears me do anything in the house she starts up again. I'm just going to leave her in there for a while because I'm having a tough time finding a place to start from "hysterics every time I take a step".

Is there a threshold where you can leave, return, and have her still possessing a brain? Like, if you walk out the front door and immediately return, will she be calm?

Is she only overexcited in this context, or is she globally completely spun out? If she's that overexcited about everything, it might be a case to consider medication. Her brain can't learn in that state. I think you're going to have to work on it from the other direction, figure out what the triggers are that spin her up and increasing tolerance for those, rather than trying to calm her down once she's already ramped up.

If you put her in the crate but don't leave, does she stay quiet, or is she just that wound up regardless?

One idea I haven't seen mentioned is something along the lines of a ThunderShirt. I've seen some dogs just kind of chill out the second they are put on. Part of me wonders if it is a mild aversive and they are just shutting down, although everyone just seems to compare it to swaddling a baby and says it is soothing.

Regardless, it might be a kind of benign way to get a more calm reaction, which you could then reward. Maybe she'd be mellow enough to take treats?

If she's calm and I walk out the front door she will usually chill out...until I come back. I can go outside to check the mail and usually expect a slightly smaller spazz-attack when I come back in. If I'm trying to wait out her getting-home brainfart then walking out the door triggers 5-10 minutes of barking, walking back in triggers 5-10 minutes of barking, ad infinitum. Any sign of life sends her into hysterics.

She is a horribly spooky little dog with vision problems. She is also a foster for a rescue that is having various issues, and I haven't been able to convince anyone that she needs to see a vet for her obviously imperfect eyesight. They are also completely not on board with trying to get her on meds for her obviously severe anxiety. I have made significantly more progress with her than her main foster, but it's still very slow going and often one step forward, two steps back. I'm getting pretty close to sending her back though, because it's so obvious to me that she's going to be in foster care forever unless someone addresses her issues more realistically.

She doesn't get wound up in the crate until I leave, but she does get wound up the moment I walk out the door. Same when she's uncrated. She's pretty iffy about taking treats pretty much all the time. Peanut butter, freeze-dried liver or tripe, spray cheese, there's nothing she'll reliably eat when she's anything less than perfectly calm. She has a thundershirt, it really helped her come out of her shell and stop slinking around looking like I beat her. Unfortunately, "out of her shell" looks a lot like "complete basket case" sometimes.

I think I will helpfully suggest meds again now that she's hitting 12 months. At least the reply is less likely to be "But she's a puppy! We can't use drugs on a developing brain!"

That sucks. :/

In that situation, I might stop trying to change behavior and focus more on mitigating its impact. Especially since you say it's just getting worse. So, stop waiting for her to calm down in the crate and just make a chute so she can charge out of the crate into the yard or some place she can spin back down.

I think a lot of time well-intentioned "wait them out in the crate" backfires because either the dog is more persistent than the human, or their brain is so overloaded it can't learn. Better to just let them out when they're learning the least bad thing.

When she's loose in the house I can sometimes toss her out in the yard as I'm coming in the door and let her bark and spin out there, but it still takes a very long time for her to get her brain back and she's pretty likely to go nuts as soon as I let her back in.

Is there any way you can gate her in a room off of the entry way where she can see you come in and be able to move around but not be able to get to you? If left in that room would she eventually calm down enough to be able to follow commands?

I might be able to gate her into the back hall, but I'm not sure she would be any less crazed than she is in the crate. Probably wouldn't hurt to try.