Pets on Drugs
It’s high time that man’s best friend gets to benefit from some of our best habits
The idea of “strong” has become a thing, the way fried Twinkies, constantly “hydrating,” and the idea that every town in America, no matter how small gets to have its own brewery has become a thing, “strong,” or #strong, has become something for people to rally around. We have had #Bostonstrong, #Jerseystrong, and #Fill-in-the-blank-strong for whoever is suffering from anything that can kill you. Only the cynical eye can see that there’s a great irony in all of this, and the irony is that we as a people really aren’t all that strong. In fact, you could argue that we are weaker as individuals than we’ve ever been at any time in human history.
It’s not just that we like to sit around and complain, or play video games, or stare at our phones, or claim that we suffer from anxiety, or call out anybody that we think might be shaming anybody in any way or shape, oh wait, no, that’s exactly what it is. Well, let me add another way in which we are not very #strong, we now put our pets on anti-anxiety medications. How do I know? Because that’s exactly what my wife and I have done with our “Bagel,” (Half Beagle, half Basset Hound.) He is now officially on drugs, and my wife and I are his dealers. Cue the opening guitar riff from the Steppenwolf classic, “The Pusher.”
Is this where we are heading as a society? Drooling, casual humping, gobbling up our food mindlessly, peeing in the street, these are the behaviors of a nation suffering from drug abuse…or um just being a dog. (You Tube)
Have we finally subjected our canine population to our worst habits? As humans, if there’s any issue we can’t seem to handle, our goto is to medicate. Now we’ve decided because it has worked so well for Homo sapiens, why not try this approach on Homo sapiens’ best friend? Well, some are. In fact, according to a 2017 national survey taken by the market research firm Packaged Facts, approximately eight percent of dog owners and six percent of cat owners are now giving their pets drugs to help with their anxiety and/or depression. There are approximately 60 million households in the United States that have at least one dog, and 40 million that have at least one cat. So do the math. (Seriously do the math, because I really can’t. I would also add that numbers related to cat ownership are probably skewed since many of the households with cats are made up of older single women with at least 12 cats per household.)
How desperate has the situation regarding our pets and their dependency on drugs to deal with their anxiety and depression become? Well just the other day a friend of mine told me that he was walking past an alley, and some mangy looking bitch offered to lick peanut butter off of his genitalia in exchange for a hit of Amitriptyline. It was just #sad. The local Animal Control Officer had to come and take her pups away.
Before you decide what kind of medications to give your pet for their alleged anxiety and depression, you first have to ascertain whether in fact your dog or cat suffers from any or all of the above mental maladies. What are the signs of depression in a dog for example? Well according to Pets WebMd…
- They become withdrawn — “Spot simply won’t go to school anymore”
- They become inactive — “Fido used to sleep 18 hours a day, now he’s up to 19.”
- Their eating habits change — “I don’t know what in the world is wrong with Shep, he hasn’t eaten his own vomit in months.”
- They don’t participate in the things they used to enjoy — “So just as I predicted, Skippy stopped licking his balls, I could see the effort just wasn’t there. It’s like he was mailing it in or something.”
This mocking of a certain dog who would prefer to remain anonymous must have created intense anxiety as well as depression as he was forced to take on the role of “reindeer” for a certain family’s amusement. Shame on them. (Hoffman Collection)
Anxiety in dogs can be even trickier to diagnose I would think. After all, a seemingly mentally healthy dog is typically excited, barking, running around pointlessly, how can a vet figure out when a dog is anxious versus just being his usual dog-self? According to akc.org, here are the signs to look for in a dog that might be suffering from anxiety.
- Aggression — It’s really all relative, an aggressive Beagle or Chihuahua is not the same as an aggressive Pit Bull or Rottweiler.
- Urinating or defecating in the house — Is it, or is it just the leftover signs of a really wild night?
- Drooling — Hey, who amongst us hasn’t forgotten to swallow once in a while?
- Panting — This one makes them sound like an obscene phone caller….so I’m told.
- Destructive behavior — This is also known as “Keith Moon Syndrome.”
The problem is many dogs exhibit these behaviors every now and then. For example, my dog has had a non-stop issue with urinating and/or defecating in the house. He drools because, hey, that’s what dogs do. He does pant sometimes, and you figure something must be bothering him, but then it eventually goes away. As for the destructive behavior, well usually dogs get destructive when they’re bored, but that doesn’t mean they suffer from chronic anxiety, or does it? Teenagers tend to become destructive when they’re bored. Do we want all of them on anti-anxiety meds? Oh wait, that’s right it’s 2019 in America, yes we do.
Part of the problem in our country is that we are very quick to put our children and teenagers on medications for all sorts of mental and emotional issues. Let’s face it, if it works for our kids, it will most likely work for our dogs. Some people pine for the days of tough love. They say that they had it just as hard as their children, if not worse, and so if they could handle life without meds or a trip to the psychiatrist, then so can their children. Along the same lines, I’m thinking that having a “shrink” for your dog or cat is a relatively new phenomenon. Who had money for that back in the day? Even Roosevelt never sent his beloved “Scotty” Fala to a dog shrink no matter how vicious Republican attacks upon Fala’s honor became.
(Ever the progressive, FDR was quick to point out the emotional damage that a dog can be subject to in the heat of a presidential campaign. I would point out however that many may be uncomfortable in today’s world with his stereotyping of the “Scotts,” as individuals who are close to the dollar. My apologies of course on FDR’s behalf. You Tube)
The idea for attempting to put my dog on anti-anxiety meds was inspired by two separate prompts. It began when we were visiting friends of ours down south, and they introduced us to their dog who they said was a breed called a Pocket Beagle. I had never heard of this particular breed of Beagle, but it looked like a Beagle that could fit into your coat pocket, provided you had pockets the size of Harpo Marx. At any rate, they said that the dog suffered from anxiety, and that they felt he had improved upon being prescribed anti-anxiety medications. It was an option for our dog that I had never considered before. Our own particular dog named Simon has been a part of our household for about three years, and we were well aware of his “irregularities.” What where those irregularities?
We adopted Simon here in the Capital Region after our Beagle Burt had passed to the great boneyard in the sky. My wife was quite upset over this ordeal, and proceeded to make it her calling to find us another Beagle as soon as possible. She found one at a pet adoption agency that specialized in special-needs dogs. Yes, that’s a thing. The nice lady arrived with two Beagles in her van and brought them into our house. One was a smallish Beagle who had been hit by a car. She had a limp due to her recent hip replacement surgery, and part of her hair was shaved off. Still she seemed sweet and housebroken, and wasn’t even a bad walker all things considered. Simon followed next, and immediately peed on our dining room floor. We were then told that Simon suffered from seizures, and was very skittish around people he didn’t know. The decision over which of these hounds we were going to keep seemed pretty cut and dried to me. However when my wife and I huddled to discuss the matter, she pointed out to me that the little dog with the new hip was $300, while Simon and his mental issues was $40. Like Fala, FDR’s dog with the Scottish sensibilities for sound financial decision-making, we picked Simon. As with every decision ever made based on picking the choice which is cheaper, I immediately regretted my decision.
“I know you’re talking about me.” (Hoffman Collection)
The seizures aren’t really all that bad, and while they can be controlled to some extent by medication, the medicine is hard on the dogs, and shortens their lives, and since I want to stay married, I’ll just say for the record that that’s a bad thing. However, he pees and poops a lot in the house, and that really is an annoyance. Our vet says that as Beagles go, 90% house trained, is house trained. While we’ve come to accept this to some extent, he recently pulled a move that we could not just look past.
As it is, we have to keep the doors to the bedrooms upstairs closed since he seems to enjoy peeing in those rooms. However, a few weeks ago he decided to up the ante, and peed ON OUR BED. We have a huge comforter that can’t be cleaned in our washing machine so we had to take it to the “no judgements” dry cleaner. Wouldn’t you know it, a few weeks later he did it again. When I took him to the vet the doctor suggested that he might be behaving this way due to separation anxiety, and that we shouldn’t yell at him. Then we both laughed because, you know, the dog had peed in my bed, and somebody was going to have to pay for that. I mentioned that the dog was very perceptive regarding his fear over separation since if he did this one more time he was going to find himself separated from us permanently. I then calmed down and asked about anxiety medicine for dogs. (It was one of those moments where you can’t possibly believe what’s coming out of your mouth. It’s kind of as if you found yourself saying “I wonder if Scientology really does have the answers for the questions life poses?”)
It’s not as if we hadn’t attempted to deal with his anxiety before. My wife who believes that there literally isn’t anything that one can’t find on the internet, found something called a Thundershirt. It’s something that you put around your dog when you think something is going to upset him like a thunderstorm, or fireworks, or in our dog’s case, days ending in “ay.” While we had some success with the Thundershirt it doesn’t solve the long-term issue of him peeing or pooping in the house due to whatever mental malady is afflicting him. Therefore we decided to hook him on the good stuff.
We had some success with the Thundershirtwhen we took him for long walks in the woods. Of course, Simon being Simon, he picked up a tick and now has Lyme disease. (Hoffman Collection)
Despite my suggestions for getting him hooked on Oxycontin, you know, “Hillbilly Heroin,” since it seemed to make Rush Limbaugh much more docile, the doctor suggested an organic and all natural anti-anxiety pill called Anxitane. The box claims it “Helps keep medium and large dogs calm and relaxed.” (I’m not sure what happens with small dogs, but I suppose if they’re too much to handle you could probably go and purchase a coyote or mountain lion to deal with a small dog that doesn’t seem to fit in with the family.) The vet said that we should give it to him, but not to put it in cheese since all dogs are basically lactose intolerant. Who knew? Dogs suffer from made up diseases just like humans. At any rate, since I was finding it problematic to get him to take his meds in anything else, I found some spreadable pub cheese in the back of our refrigerator, and stuck the pill in the middle of a glob of cheese, and pretended all would be fine, which so far it has. There have been no accidents in the house since Simon began his Anxitane, and he can discuss politics without becoming agitated.
Anxitane, have your dog ask for it by name. (Hoffman Collection)
The idea of dogs and cats with emotional or mental issues is an interesting one, but hardly a surprise. We live in a time where everybody seems to have some sort of disability either mental or physical, so should we be surprised that our dogs and cats are suffering from the same disabling conditions that seem to afflict the rest of us? My question however is, what about the other pets that we attempt to use to fill our otherwise empty lives? Can a ferret suffer from depression? How about a turtle? Could you tell if your turtle was depressed? They’re already introverts, so I”m not sure what a depressed turtle would act like. How about guinea pigs? They are labeled with an Italian ethnic slur, and the word pig, how low must their self-esteem be? Rabbits? They’re always panting…and pooping, and reproducing. They’re like nervous hookers with irritable bowel syndrome. Do snakes suffer from anxiety? They shed their skin, is that like when a person’s hair falls out because they’re under stress?
In the wild there’s no time for depression and/or anxiety. Do you know what they call the member of the herd that suffers from these conditions? Dinner for lions. Perhaps the next time our dog or cat shows signs of depression or anxiety, we should show them what it’s like being a wild dog or cat, then they can see how good they have it, and stop their panting and drooling. What kind of way is that for a dog to act?