Trend Alert: Pill-Popping Pets

Max retrieves Frisbees. He gobbles jelly beans. He chases deer. He is -- and this should be remembered when discussions of cases like his blunder into the thickets of cognitive ethology, normative psychology and intraspecies solipsism -- a good dog. A 3-year-old German shepherd, all rangy limbs and skittering paws, he patrols the hardwood floors and wall-to-wall carpets of a cul-de-sac home in Lafayette, Calif., living with Michelle Spring, a nurse, and her husband, Allan, a retired airline pilot. Max fields tennis balls with his dexterous forelegs and can stand on his hindquarters to open the front door. He loves car rides and will leap inside any available auto, even ones belonging to strangers. Housebroken, he did slip up once indoors, but everybody knows that the Turducken Incident simply wasn't his fault. "He's agile," Allan says. "He's healthy. He's a good-looking animal." Michelle adds, "We love him to death." That is why they had no choice, she says. The dog simply had to go on psychoactive drugs.

I arrived the night Max was to receive his first pill. He picked at the food in his chow bowl while the Springs sat at the kitchen table discussing his problems. For starters, there was his overpowering need to be near people, especially Allan. If they put Max outside, he quickly relieved himself and then rushed back indoors; he raced into rooms that Allan was about to occupy; he rested his head against the bathroom door during his master's ablutions. "Watch this," Allan said. He and Michelle stood up to hug. The moment they touched, Max unleashed a string of high-pitched barks. "He likes being close to us, but he doesn't like us being close to each other," Allan said.

These behaviors, however, weren't what prompted the psychiatric intervention.

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Comments

[Durango]

We had our beagle mixed hound on Prozac and IT WORKED GREAT.

He was a very nervous dog. He could not relax. He would pace around the house. He lacked self confidence. Even though he was an older male dog he used to pee on himself when he got excited (a puppy trait).

But after the Prozac (actually Elevil) he could relax. He had more self confidence. He felt better about himself. And most importantly: we could live with him.

it did not stop his behavior. But it did mitigate it enough so he was tolerable. Under all his anxiety he was a sweetheart.

And the drugs allowed that to come out.

[pie8ter]

Woof...Woof...Woof

[jamesinraro]

The Harvard study of the red wine extract, biotivia transmax, published in the Journal Nature last year concluded that the mice fed transmax lived 31% longer while avoiding virtually all of the normal diseases of aging including bone and hip deterioration, tumors and diabetes. Since that study was released dog and cat owners have been feeding their pets this supplement on the assumption that it will also increase the life span and improve the health of their animals. Also, thoroughbred horse trainers have been supplementing their animals with transmax resveratrol The science behind this strategy seems sound but only time will tell if it actually results in healthier longer living pets.

[TruEngineHearing]

Great article and a fascinating topic.

Over the past five thousand and more years almost every civilization at some point experienced animals as volitional players on the human stage - and often as dear and feared gods, before whom we cowered.

I still feel the power of that past. I look to my cats in awe, treasuring them as god-like sublime perfections, and I have never doubted the reality of their passions and their sorrows and their sacred “umwelt”.

Show me the bush that they can eat when they are particularly troubled, and I will get it for them. Show me the medication that can help them deal with situations beyond their control, and I will get it for them. But I always know that their senses should not be unduly disturbed or their faculties diminished. We are interfering and, even though our motives are clean, we must do no harm.

Oops, gotta go - time to feed the Sphinx.

[Durango]

Cats are NOT Godlike creatures.

They are alien beings from a different planet, maybe a dimension, put here on earth to keep an eye on us.

Which is why they are so curious about everything we do. They are reporting back on you.

So you had better be nice to them.