I feel bad writing this and worse feeling this way, but I’m at a loss. My almost 5 month old puppy has been increasingly fearful of EVERYTHING the whole time I’ve had her (2 months).

She is noise sensitive, and I live in a big city so going outside for anything is a painful experience. She was cautious on walks, but as long as we went straight to the park on the same route, she was ok. Now, she won’t even do that.

She was particularly skittish about being outside cus of the 4th July and Thunderstorms in my area, which is understandable, so I tried limiting trips outside to potty breaks. But then I noticed that she was refusing to potty outside. Ok, fair enough, I’ll clean up after her inside.

But since she’s house trained, she holds it in until the last possible moment and has a sneaky accident. That can’t be fun, or healthy… so I carried to the bark (a block down the street). A few times a day so she could do her business, and as soon as her paws hit the grass she was eliminating everywhere.

To be clear, she refused to do her business on the sidewalk right outside or near my apartment building, but also refused to walk to the park…

I said to myself “fair enough, I’ll just carry her there and back and walking her back and forth in the basement of my building (which has a long corridor)”. Tried this a couple of times and then she accidentally moved a chair fhat was propping open a chair down there and was frightened to high heaven.

She’s again, been more reluctant to be outside ever since, so I said to myself “Ok, maybe you can toss a toy back and forth in your apartment so she can get exercise. It will take longer cus my apartment is tiny, but she seems to like that game so it’s fine.”

Then a toy bumped into something as a tossed it down the only way that we can play fetch. There was a low, but unexpected thump. Nothing was fell, or was knocked over. She refuses to go to that area of the apartment now…

I’m running out of options for alternative means of exercise. Her noise sensitivity/anxiety/phobia is getting worse. I don’t know what to do.

I don’t care about cleaning up after her, the damage to the furniture, the biting me, or any of the stuff that people generally struggle with when getting. But I was not prepared for this.

I’ve been taking Ubers every time I need to get her anywhere in the city (vets, puppy socials, etc) cus I don’t have a care and there’s no way she’s ready for the subway.

A few days ago I got into it with some asshole cus he actually barked at my dog while I was trying to calm her down after a Harley roared down the street.

On the 4th of July I almost got into an altercation cus on top of the street fireworks, some guys were that don’t live in my building were smoking and blasting music on my stoop. I asked politely and explained the situation, but the got defensive.

“Don’t try and blame your dog being fearful on us cus I’ve seen you have to carry her before!!”

• Bro I’m not blaming anything on you, I’m asking you for a favor…

And I’m so. Damn. Tired. Of people trivializing what I’m seeing get worse on a daily basis cus “sHe’S jUsT a PuPpY.. sHe’Ll bE fInE”.

Ya maybe you’re right. But maybe you’re basing this advise on a 1 minute interaction you had with her which happened to be positive cus she loves meeting people and other dogs. Maybe if you saw her get more and more cautious about more and more things, you’d be as worried as I am.

Maybe if you had to actually deal with this situation like I am you doing be as exhausted (in every sense of the word) as I am.

Maybe you should just let me vent about the ongoing saga of having fearful dog in one of the loudest cities in the world.

I just don’t know wtf to do man…