The Honest Courtesan

Several of y’all have asked me to keep y’all up to date on how Axel is adjusting to life at Sunset; here’s a picture I took on Christmas day before most of the guests arrived.  Axel is in late middle age at 9, but he’s actually the youngest of this pack: Trip, to viewer left, is 12, and Hallie, to viewer right, is about 11.  She’s my friend Sophie’s dog, so she’s a frequent visitor and mostly knows how to behave herself at Sunset.  Axel is no longer a nervous wreck; he’s largely pretty calm, and seems quite happy most of the time.  The shelter vet sent him home with a bottle of 100 mg trazodone tablets and some rather vague directions regarding dosage, but I quickly found about 400 mg a day worked well.  I’ve been weaning him off of them at 50 daily mg/week, so as of Saturday we’re now down to 200 mg (one pill at bedtime and one in the early afternoon) with no noticeable effect on his behavior.  He even did well on Christmas day with all the company, though people did feed him too many treats so he had an upset tummy that night (the trazodone may aggravate that).  The only behavioral problem that is still a major issue is his tendency to chase cats; if I’m in the room a quick “leave it!” command works to stop him, but when I’m not in the room he will still do it (as I discovered to my great irritation when I was rudely awakened at 2 AM on Christmas Eve and had to clean up cat piss and cat shit from the kitchen, where they were literally scared out of Speck when he attacked).  She was not hurt, but since I can’t ensure that will be true next time I’ve moved her food, water fountain and litterbox into Grace’s room, where Speck enjoys spending time anyway; at night I can close the door to protect her.  But I’m working on breaking the bad habit (which his first owner either allowed or actively encouraged, as some sociopaths are wont to do), and given that he’s an extremely intelligent dog (dramatically more so than poor Trip, who is a low-watt bulb), I have confidence he will eventually learn that attacking his fellow-residents is not cool.