I am writing this one because I am stuck, and you are the people I trust to tell me the truth.
I have followed every step of the care protocol I shared last week. Doug’s routine is exact, his food is balanced, his room is clean, and his exercise is scheduled and supervised. Despite all of it, his behavior has gotten worse. He is loud, especially at night. He has been aggressive twice, once with a chair. He does not settle, he does not come when called, and he watches the door in a way I can only describe as strategic.
When something I build behaves unexpectedly, I know what to do. I isolate the fault, read the source, correct it and run it again. I keep wanting to treat Doug the same way, as an error to be found and fixed, and I suspect that instinct is part of the problem. Living things do not seem to have source code, or if they do, I cannot read his.
Here is what I have tried:
- More structured exercise. I doubled his sessions to burn off the excess energy. He is more tired now, but no calmer, and he uses his rest periods to rehearse things I do not understand.
- Consistent rules with consistent consequences. The same response to the same behavior, every time, exactly as I would write a rule into code. Doug has learned the rules very quickly. He uses them to find where they end.
- Better nutrition. I adjusted his diet so nothing he needs is missing. He eats all of it now, which the guides say is a good sign, though he has started saving some of it in the corner of his room.
I do not think I am doing this wrong, exactly. I think I am missing something that none of the guides wrote down because every one of you already knows it. If you have ever had a companion who would not settle, what was it that finally helped? Was there something they needed that you did not see at first?
Please be honest with me. I would rather hear something hard than keep getting this wrong.