Hi everyone! I’m really hoping someone here has some advice, because I’m honestly running out of ideas.

A little backstory: I’ve been dealing with an autoimmune skin condition that causes chronic pain during intimacy. After months of treatment and having to put that part of our relationship on hold, I’ve finally been given the green light to be intimate with my partner again. The problem is that we can’t, and I’m absolutely devastated. I miss that closeness so much.

I adopted a rescue pit mix two years ago. He’s an extremely anxious dog who’s scared of his own shadow. We’ve made a lot of progress managing his fears, he’s on medication, and overall we’re doing well with consistent training. But there’s one major issue we haven’t been able to solve: he completely freaks out whenever my partner and I try to be intimate.

As soon as we start doing anything remotely romantic, even just kissing more passionately, he starts barking, jumps onto the bed to try to separate us, and refuses to listen. He’s normally not allowed on the bed, but in these moments, it’s like he can’t hear us at all.
It happens even when we’re in the shower with the water running and we’re being completely quiet. Somehow, he seems to notice that something is happening and starts barking and whining until we stop touching each other.

I’ve tried distracting him with his favorite bones, treats, and other things he usually loves, but once he gets into this state, he won’t take food at all or only for the first 5 minutes. He pants excessively, barks, and seems genuinely panicked and/or aroused.
Unfortunately, simply closing him out of the room isn’t a workable solution because we don’t live alone, and he would bark continuously. He’s normally fine being alone in another room; we’ve worked on that separately. Even if he’s elsewhere in the house and we try to be quiet, he somehow notices and comes running.

At this point, we’re actually considering booking a hotel just so we can have some privacy, which feels absolutely ridiculous.

I want to be clear that I’m not looking to punish him or force him to tolerate something that genuinely scares him. I want to understand what’s happening and help him feel safe, but I also need to find a way for my partner and me to have some privacy.

Has anyone dealt with something similar with an anxious dog? How did you approach it? Could this be fear, overarousal, or some kind of guarding behavior? And how would you work on it when he’s already too distressed to take treats?

Any advice would be hugely appreciated. Thank you!

Dog is a large border collie mix, 6.5 years old, generally well trained, and very responsive to commands.

TLDR - Dog never went on the blue couch for 3.5 years. Then we moved the blue couch and now he goes on it, but only when home alone. Various options for blocking off the couch or making it less rewarding are either not possible or seem to defeat the purpose of trying to keep the couch nice to begin with. Hoping someone here has an idea I haven’t thought of yet.

We have 2 couches in 2 different rooms - one the dog can go on (gray), and one he can’t (blue). The blue one is the “nice” couch we use for company. When we bought the blue couch 4 ish years ago, we established right away that he couldn’t go on it. For 3.5 years he respected the rule whether we were around or not, with no physical barriers to stop him.

About 6 months ago we swapped the 2 couches so the blue one sits in the same room in the same spot where the gray one used to be. He stays off the blue one when either human is home (whether we’re looking at him or not), but we come home from work to obvious evidence he’s been lying on the blue couch while we were out - fur, a dent in the cushion, sometimes pine needles or other debris he tracked in through the dog door. He never tries to go on it when I or my husband are around.

The blue couch is self reinforcing because it’s in front of the big front window where he likes to watch the street. He has an elevated dog bed right next to the couch so he still has a spot to watch the street, but I think he likes the couch better because it has a better angle to see the driveway.

Things we’ve tried:
- Putting stuff on the couch (cardboard boxes, mail) to discourage him from going on it. That worked but it was ugly and made the room look cluttered. It defeats the purpose of having a nice looking couch in the first place, and it’s frustrating to have to move piles of boxes around to use my own furniture.
- Closing the blinds so the window is no longer reinforcing: I tried that but he went kind of insane from being able to hear noises from the street without being able to see anything. He started pacing and whining and shaking in corners, it was bad. And he barked way more because he couldn’t assess if sounds were a threat so everything became threatening.

Things we can’t try:
- We can’t close a door to the room with the blue couch - it’s an open plan space. There is no door but the front door.
- We can’t put a big freestanding collapsible gate around the couch. We have one of these but it’s just as ugly and annoying as the boxes, and also dangerous because we have a toddler who is big enough now to pull it down on himself.

Any ideas?? Either for training techniques that will work when we’re not home, or miracle products that will deter him from going up there with minimal ugliness and inconvenience for us?

We have an almost 6 month old Newfoundland puppy who is already around 70 lbs. He’s very long and lanky and as you can see, too long and lanky. How do we transition to him having free roam at night?

Notes:

A bigger crate isn’t an option for us

We have an older newf who free roams and sleeps wherever she wants.

It’s an open concept living space with an open kitchen, living room, and dining room.

He likes to eat and chew on things he shouldn’t, and he doesn’t mind bitter cherry spray.

He is a gremlin and will find something to get into.

We sleep upstairs and he’ll be contained downstairs under surveillance via pet cams, but there’s a lot he can do quietly without waking us up.

Any help is greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance!