Yesterday, we had a crew of arborists working in our backyard. We've been postponing this tree work for a few years as we didn't know how to handle Skye during their visit. We can't take her away from our home and go for a hike, so we anchored down in the house. We stayed with her in the living room, had a ton of treats on hands, and gave her some meds (gabapentin + clonidine) to lower her stress.
She did amazingly well for the first few hours. We played the look-at-that game when the workers arrived and brought their tools.
And then she napped...
Until they start working on the tree near the house and branches fell by the window. We did another game of look-at-that but there was a guy walking on the roof and that was just too much for Skye to handle. She went around the house trying to find a safer spot and ended up squeezing herself in a corner near where I was sitting. At this point, she wasn't interested in food or anything.
So we just stayed by her side, doing out best to project calmness. We also asked the arborists to avoid walking on the roof as much as possible which they did. Skye started to relax and settled down under the table on my feet for the rest of the work.
The work was over after 7 hours (I told you that we've been postponing for a few years...) and we were all very relieved. Skye was happy to go outside and sniffed every inch of the yard. Everything was back to normal.
All in all, Skye did amazingly well. She handled much more of the stress than we had thought she would, and found comfort in being with us. She made so much progress!