Kaiju has not improved so much in terms of his inability to walk in most public places without being very scared. He’s still on medication, and he will be for a long time.

What has changed recently is that we have sort of given up on doing regular walks, for now. After Dr. Dodman (our behaviorist) told us not to force the issue, we’ve stopped asking Kaiju to go once around the block, which we insisted before in the mornings and afternoons. Now, Kaiju only goes out for quick potty breaks. At night, we no longer take him to long walks in our residential neighborhood. Instead, every single night, we drive (10+ minutes) him out to a park for an hour walk. It’s not a big park, so we make multiple rounds sometimes, to make it an hour. Kaiju loves this park. He runs around, gets the craziest zoomies, chases rabbits, runs around with dogs if we encounter them, mostly in the dark.

Basicaly, we’ve stopped trying to make him “better”. For now, we focus on giving him a fun and safe life. We do ask Kaiju to take extra steps to go some extra feet every morning, with the help of good treats. When he feels good, he does, just for a few minutes. When he does not, he stops and looks back towards home. Then we go home.

Now that we are giving him practically no pressure, his body language during morning and afternoon potty breaks are noticeably more relaxed. We hope that the quality of life for him has gone up considerably also. One thing for sure. The quality of our (the humans’) lives have definitely improved. We are not in despair nor stressed at every single walk. We are not sure how long we will continue this, but for now, we are all happier.