Does my Dog Need Prozac®?

By Dr. Anndrea Hatcher
Olive Branch Parke Veterinary Clinic
www.olivebranchvet.com
olivebranchvet@gmail.com

Does this sound familiar? You come home from a long day at work and open the door into a blizzard. You blink and realize that the inside of your home is actually blanketed with upholstery stuffing. Your Rat Terrier, VelcroBoy, leaps up from the remains of your couch and greats you ecstatically.
Or you come home from your weekly grocery store trip with your arms full of bags. You step into the house and are overwhelmed by the odor of urine and feces. Your Labrador mix, Clingy, jumps up on you with her front paws gooey with….yuck.
VelcroBoy and Clingy (who, by the way, barks constantly while you are gone, making you a candidate for the Least-Favorite-Neighbor-Award) aren’t behaving this way because they are angry at you for leaving them alone. Some animals, like people, can suffer from mental disease due to an imbalance of brain chemicals. VelcroBoy and Clingy have separation anxiety. They are destructive, loud or messy because they are so abnormally distressed when you are away from them. Separation anxiety is most often seen in dogs two years old and younger and in dogs nine years old and older. It is thought that older dogs may start losing their sight and hearing and become more nervous when they aren’t in close proximity to their owners.
Separation anxiety is different than a dog that isn’t house broken, a puppy that is chewing on furniture because he is teething, or a Labrador Retriever that needs more exercise and is frantically bored. The separation anxiety behaviors only take place when the dog is away from his owner.
So, maybe your pooch does need Prozac®. There are two veterinary drugs currently labeled for use for separation anxiety in dogs, Clomicalm® and Reconcile ®. They each have generic forms available, clomipramine and fluoxetine (Prozac®).
In dogs, these drugs work by changing the brain chemistry to decrease their fear and anxiety and increase their ability to learn. Treating separation anxiety requires not only medication, but training.
Highlights of the training include:
1. Pay no attention to your anxious dog for 30 minutes before you leave the house. Right before you go, calmly give your dog a special treat, like a Kong ® filled with peanut butter, to distract him while you calmly leave the house.
2. When you get home, ignore your dog until he is calm. Don’t punish him if he damaged things or went to the bathroom in the house while you were gone. (Putting him in a dog crate while you are gone might be a good idea, to keep him from eating your grandmother’s hope chest.)
3. Periodically go through your leaving routine, like picking up your keys, but don’t leave, while still ignoring the dog.

Separation anxiety medication and training won’t cure all dogs, but generally are pretty successful. Not all dogs are candidates for these drugs, and some medications will interact with them. (Wow, shouldn’t I read those last two sentences very quickly and in a monotone and get paid a lot by a pharmaceutical company?)