Canine Separation: To Drug Or Not To Drug

I was reading an article called doggie drugs, it talks about a women whose collie, Labrador mix breed dog was diagnose with behavioral problems that is called canine separation anxiety.

This behavior happens when the owner leaves for a time and the dog will walk around either barking or howling and whining for their owner to come back. And at times the dog will even urinate all over the house and even start to have some kind of destructive behavior like biting on the furniture and ripping this apart.

I went on to read about the different kinds of drugs there are. One being called Reconcile which states: some of the reactions are calm or lethargy, reduced appetite, vomiting, shaking, diarrhea, restlessness, excessive vocalization, aggression and, in infrequent cases, seizures.

Wow that really makes me want to put my buddy on this stuff. Their own product label says that some of the dogs had bad seizures and even died.

So I went on to see if there were any more companies that produce meds for dogs and found Clomicalm that says it’s proven to be safe and effective in helping to relieve the suffering in and helping dogs with separation anxiety disorder return to a normal life. So I read their product label and it said that the product doses not act like a sedative and helps reduce the anxiety.
Clomicalm adverse reactions were: Letharygy/depression, vomiting, diarrhea, elevation in the liver enzymes, increased heart rate, decreased heart rate, increased thirst and confusion. These side affect symptoms don’t sound too good to me, and they even went on to say that liver disease has occurred. Now that’s what I want my dog to have, what a great product.

I checked out a few web sites on dog behaviors and found an old article by Stacy Conroy who had a nice training approach that didn’t call for any type of pharmaceutical drug, which goes on to show you that a little training can go a long way.

Then I found an article over at Canines of America which had some really good idea’s about helping your dog get though the separation anxiety, until I read it all the way to the bottom where it stated that sometimes you must consult a qualified animal behaviorist. That went on to say that Prozac might help.

Is that what people were giving their kids a few years back when they didn’t behave. I remember reading one time that the suicidal rate had gotten real bad from this stuff. I wonder about a dog doing this, knowing he couldn’t kill himself. Maybe it would make the dog more violent or something like that. Who knows about all this kind of meds for our dogs, I don’t really know the real outcome. I do know that after reading about all these side effects I will not and I mean will not give one of my dogs any of these drugs or any other type of drugs. I would work on some of the idea’s that talked about different ways to train their behaviors.

So think about your pet’s life before you decide to just drug your dog….

Read the article by Andy Blatchford here.