‘Crazy’ pet? Are medications the answer?
By Gina Spadafori
July 10, 2008
Is the increase in the use of medications for pet behavior problems a matter of pet-owners who don’t know how to care for or train their pets and expect them to be perfect? Is it a matter of pharmaceutical companies seeing opportunity? Do such meds work at all? Are we just making our pets crazy by expecting them to be well-behaved child substitutes?
This weekend’s New York Times magazine covers it all.
Prozac for pets burst onto the scene a few years ago with a page one piece in the Wall Street Journal, focusing on the work of Dr. Nicholas Dodman, at Tufts. Pets now have their own version of Prozac — Reconcile — and other meds have joined, too. From the piece:
Although most animal-behavior problems are believed to have genetic roots, their expressions are typically triggered by the unnatural lives that people force their pets to lead. “A dog that lived on a farm and ran around chasing rabbits all day would be more prone to being stable than a dog living in an apartment in Manhattan,” Dodman says. Undomesticated canids, neither confined nor excessively attached to people, don’t suffer from separation anxiety. Some captive horses endlessly circle their stalls or corrals — a compulsive behavior similar to Max’s tail chasing — but such purposeless repetitions have never been observed in the wild.
Pharmacological treatments, furthermore, are sometimes more for the convenience of owners than they are for the health of pets. When the dog bites, when the cat pees — “a lot of the ‘behavior problems’ we see are actually normal behaviors for the animal,” Dodman says. Cats aren’t mentally ill if they attack a new feline in the household or claw furniture to mark their domain. Food guarding and aggression toward strangers boost a dog’s survival rate in the wild but don’t cut it in the living room. And both cats and dogs demarcate territory with urine. “If a dog goes to the bathroom on a bush outside, you don’t mind as long as it’s not your bush,” Dodman says. “But when he comes back to the house and lifts his leg on your chair, it’s like, ‘Is the dog mentally sick?’ ”
In many other situations, however, a medicated animal may be a better-off one — for his own sake and not just for his master’s peace of mind.
One of the other great names in the veterinary behavior world, Dr. Ian Dunbar, disagrees:
“I have never in my life had to resort to using drugs to resolve a behavior problem,” he says. The rush to the medicine bottle for easily resolved problems like canine obesity — “Just feed the dog less!” — shows a disturbing parallel to the human approach to health care, he says. “We lead an unhealthy lifestyle and then rely on drugs to correct it.” … Pharmacological aids are helpful in extreme circumstances, Dunbar acknowledged, but for the vast majority of cases, behavior modification alone does the trick.
Here’s the entire piece, and it’s a great read. Lots to chew on here. Although, really, it’s not an either-or issue. Dodman’s prescription for behavior fixes has always stressed exercise and environmental enrichment. On this, everyone agrees: Our pets are bored and sedentary, and that’s a recipe for unhappiness as well as bad behavior.
Update: Look for this story to be everywhere next week. Dr. Dodman was already on “Good Morning America” today, and others will also follow the NYT lead.
Many of the things done with dogs are extremely unnatural and no doubt cause some amount of stress to at least some dogs: conformation dog shows, carrying dogs in infant sacks, pushing them in baby strollers, crating for 40 or more hours per week during daylight hours, using dog parks to release pent up energy and anxiety…
Comment by slt — July 10, 2008 @ 7:54 am
Here’s one vote for pharmacologic intervention being helpful. My dog and I were returning to my car after a nice walk at the dog park when I discovered that it had been broken into and my laptop, textbooks, and notes for the semester were all gone. I freaked out, and within a day Winnie started exhibiting all the classic signs of separation anxiety. She also sunk into what I can only describe as a depression- no interest in playing or eating, the dog park became terrifying, and at home all she wanted to do was sulk or pace. After several weeks of this, and ruling out medical causes, we started her on Clomicalm. Two weeks later, and it was like the lights turned back on and I had my dog back. We still had to do intensive behavioral therapy as well, and she’s never been the same about the dog park, but without the help of meds nothing else was able to reach her.
Not saying that drugs are the answer in every case, but I’m still thankful that they helped me bring my girl back.
Comment by Megan — July 10, 2008 @ 8:51 am
“Although most animal-behavior problems are believed to have genetic roots…”
I thought it was generally understood that this is NOT the case. Almost all the behaviors that we think of as problems are caused/allowed by humans and can be trained away.
Of course breed-based behavior probably is genetic, though we don’t have the science to figure it out. But the inability to understand the difference between “genetic” breed-based behavior (which may or may not be a “problem” ) and “dogs do what works for them” so-called problems is pretty central to almost all the complications we have with dogs now.
Comment by EmilyS — July 10, 2008 @ 9:46 am
I took this to mean that what is normal behavior for a dog doesn’t always fit well in man-made surroundings. He makes that point more explicitly later at a couple points, and the experts he quotes make it, too.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — July 10, 2008 @ 9:55 am
Well, I’d like to see some account of Dodman (“disturbed childhood” — Oh. My. God.) telling a client “No drugs for you. Here’s a training and exercise program that you must adhere to for the next eight weeks, under the weekly supervision of a qualified, results-oriented trainer. If the dog does not improve, and the trainer verifies that you have been fully compliant, *then* we will discuss doping your dog.”
Not gonna happen.
The NYT article makes a major conceptual error in characterizing psych meds for pets as “anthropomorphism.” The base issue is not equating organically based animal and human mental illnesses. It’s in applying the model of organic pathology to every unhappiness, every inconvenient need that a being (of any species) has, in reducing all of us and our place on the planet to our individual chemicals, and then presuming that Pfizer knows best how to adjust those chemicals.
FWIW, I will no longer take aggression cases if the dog is being medicated. Why? Because every single time I did so before, I found that the drugs had *lowered the dog’s bite threshold* from whatever it had been before to “any annoyance or disturbance.” And I’ve also seen shy/reactive nonbiters become biters when given anti-anxiety drugs.
Comment by H. Houlahan — July 10, 2008 @ 10:19 am
The exercise component is repeatedly mentioned in his books.
However … your point is backed up in the scenes from UC Davis: Many people don’t want to do the exercise and training. They want to give the dog a pill.
That said, I really do see a place for meds in working with dogs, for consideration as part of an overall program and with a recognition that the needs of a dog to be a dog must be met.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — July 10, 2008 @ 10:30 am
My dog would not be alive today if it were not for behavior-modifying medications. My only regret is that I didn’t start them sooner.
She developed noise phobias at a young age to the sound of high-pitched beeping noises (she woke me up terrified in the middle of the night, covered in pine needles that indicated she’d been trying to hide in the furthest corner of the yard — it took me an hour to realize that she was reacting to a tiny beeping sound that occurred once every two minutes, and another two hours to track it to a smoke detector’s low battery alarm). At age 10, she was frightened by the sound of a stump-digger backfiring right next to us as we passed, and her noise phobias gradually extended to every loud noise she heard while on a walk (prior to that, loud noises had never bothered her). Eventually this progressed to generalized anxiety disorder, where she was anxious around the clock, pacing, panting, digging, trying to hide, unable to sleep and making sure I did not either.
Over the years, I tried every natural treatment I could find, including desensitization, counter-conditioning, anxiety wrap, DAP adapter, Bach flower remedies, t-touch, herbal calming tinctures, and more. None did any good. Once she was sensitized to a sound, nothing except avoidance kept her from reacting to it.
It took a lot of research and the help of a veterinary behaviorist to find a combination of drugs that would allow her to lead a normal life. She is now on sertraline (Zoloft) and clonazepan (Klonopin) daily, with alprazolam (Xanax) and melatonin on an as needed basis. These drugs do not sedate her and she seems unaffected by them other than allowing her to resume normal behavior.
Had I been less resistant to the use of behavior-modifying drugs, I believe that her anxiety would never have escalated to the point that it was life-threatening. I encourage people to consider anti-anxiety drugs for dogs who are very fearful, or have noise phobias, such as to the sound of fireworks and thunder. I believe these drugs can improve quality of life and in some cases even save lives.
Dr. Karen Overall wrote an article about her mom’s dog who died due to untreated noise phobias (http://veterinarynews.dvm360.com/dvm/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=136493). She recommends treatment with alprazolam (Xanax) as needed for dogs with noise phobias.
I’ve written an article describing my experience with behavior-modifying drugs, and passing along the information that I had so much trouble finding, about how different drugs work, and which drugs can be safely combined (http://www.dogaware.com/anxiety.html).
I also mention there that these drugs must be used very cautiously for dogs with aggression problems, as many will lower the bite threshold.
Comment by Mary Straus — July 10, 2008 @ 10:50 am
Mary- I also have a dog with noise phobias,but did find n herbal med that worked. Unfortunately they no longer make it. I have 2 bottles left & supplement it with Bach’s rr. I am lesliek on itchmoforums & will send you the ingredients if you would like. You can pm me there. Trooper did not do well with standard meds,he was a zombie on them. When they discontinued this herbal,enough people called to find out why that they did a special last run,& allowed us to buy cases of it each.
Comment by Leslie k — July 10, 2008 @ 6:17 pm
Let’s face it, human beings are more stable running around on a farm than they are alternating between being cooped up in a Manhattan apartment and being cooped up in a cubicle! Road rage and desk rage are our versions of some of the aggression problems we see in dogs, I believe.
Comment by Barbara Saunders — July 18, 2008 @ 12:04 pm
Oh, I agree! I have had the experience a couple times in my life with dealing with co-workers who should have had meds slipped into their coffee.
Would not have been surprised to find out after I left that said co-workers shot up the place.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — July 18, 2008 @ 12:07 pm