A way to lick anxiety?

Despite Martina Contreras' amazing talents, I don't think Daisy would have been able to watch those neighbors go by without the help of Sheryl Carver. With Martina, we had been able to bring Daisy closer and closer to the dog class with a little less anxiety over time. As we edged slowly toward the group, we brushed her, we fed her salmon, we hugged her and did everything we could imagine that might help her relax. The salmon bits simply fell out of her mouth. Daisy was too focused on watching those animals' every move to actually eat. The brushing, however, worked well -- she had a lovely coat for a long while. And we did manage to get into the same zip code. We even came within about eight feet of one special class that somehow clicked well with Daisy. She seemed especially fond of one young Rottweiler named Zeus.

But our arms were getting tired. I had been reading about neurogenetics for a public radio documentary series I'm working on. We're doing a show on the genetic processes underlying mind, memory and conditions such as ADHD. Some of the material I had collected involved highly stressed rats and misfiring brain chemistry. The poor little creatures reminded me of Daisy.

One researcher I read about, UC Berkeley biopsychologist Darlene Francis, studies how rodents are reared. When put with a demonstrative mother, young rats turn out fine. But stressful environments both before and after birth can produce grumpy, antisocial rodents that have unusually low numbers of neurons. Their brains are swimming in the stress hormone cortisol. If their mothers didn’t lick them regularly, Francis found, little rats performed poorly on cognitive tests and acted stressed out. These babies' environments altered gene expression for a lifetime.

Francis' aim in this work is not to develop a happier rat society, but to get some insight that might be helpful for humans. Other researchers have studied emotional deprivation in toddlers and found that abuse and neglect can lead to lasting problems as adults: impaired cortisol release, poor coping skills, and depression or antisocial behavior. Daisy, I extrapolated wildly, might be suffering from a biochemical feedback loop that had gone awry in puppyhood. Maybe her brain kept misfiring, leaving her reactive and scared most of the time.

The rat studies did offer hope, though. Unhappy brain biochemistry can change in response to stimulation and social enrichment. Researchers put the lick-deprived rats into a stimulating environment with toys and interconnected cages. Both hormone release and behavior changed.

Okay, stimulation and social enrichment. Maybe bodywork, too, I casually mentioned to a neighbor who does craniosacral therapy, which aims to mend the central nervous system by subtle manipulations of the cranial and sacral bones. His face lit up. "I know just the right person," he said. Sheryl Carver, he told me, had worked with many a neurotic dog and specialized in body work along with good training principles. She even did crazy things like wrap the animal in an Ace bandage, he went on. Daisy in an Ace bandage. Tom and I called Cheryl that afternoon.