Our apartment building is settling a bit due to the recent thaw, and the ****ING INSIGNIFICANT little creaks and pops we are hearing is making Eve an absolute sound-sensitive MORON.
I lost my temper with her today, when I came home and she was wild-eyed and stress panting and would settle down for absolutely nothing except to eat her breakfast, then right back to panicking and demanding I pay attention to her. Once upon a time, this dog could self-soothe and deal with noises, but since my stupid boyfriend has catered to her stupid noise sensitivity it's turned her into a stupid attention ***** drama queen.
It's seriously driving me batshit. Never has this dog refused to crate up quietly, but a couple times a week now I get a complete frantic freakout from her when I crate her and go to bed. Not just a little bit of freaking, I'm talking the last time I tried to wait it out before freeing her, she'd thoroughly bloodied her paws and damaged the door to her crate.
I know I could get her back to stable with regards to extremely common noise, if only I could get the rest of the house on board with it... The more attention she receives for her reactions to sounds, the more she overreacts. The men I live with don't seem to recognize the simple concept of attention as a reinforcer, that any time they even GLANCE at her it's encouragement to her. I try to explain this to them and they look at me like I'm speaking in ****ing tongues.
It's such a delicate balance keeping a high drive dog as an apartment pet and with me working full time and not having the hours in the day to devote to being awake and around her, I feel like this is ruining my dog. :'(