Treating Dog Depression With Prozac

The Times:

Depression, the black dog, is now being diagnosed in black dogs — and brown, spotted, tawny and mottled ones as well. And doggy antidepressants are becoming available in the UK to treat the malady.

It may seem absurdly anthropomorphic to attribute to a sad-eyed, mopey dog the same haunting mental disorder that has caused poets and artists to take their own lives in despair. It’s not. Dogs can be — and many certainly are — depressed. What is absurd would be to assume that prescribing a pill should be the first course of action.

Unsurprisingly, America — land of prodigious consumption and of medication to help us to deal with angst over the same — got there first. Eli Lilly’s drug Reconcile has been around since 2007. It is essentially beef-flavored Prozac, a popular human antidepressant called an SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor). An earlier form of antidepressants called trycyclics have been prescribed to dogs since 1998. In the US, there are also approved drugs to treat canine obesity, car-sickness and cognitive dysfunction. For that read: we feed our dogs too much, drive too fast with the dog sloshing around in the backseat and treat dogs just well enough that they get old and dotty.

Prozac and other SSRIs have been used to treat not only depression, but also a host of other maladies: separation anxiety, aggression, phobias and related undesired or undesirable behaviour. Even overnight incontinence could prompt a vet to write a prescription. One well-known vet and researcher crowed in a recent book that vets can now reach for this one medicine to address all the behavioural problems that they see. If it has not yet been prescribed for canine erectile dysfunction or anti-smoking, it can only be a matter of time.

Is your dog depressed? If he gets only a perfunctory walk or two in a day, gets yanked from the best smells, doesn’t interact with other dogs and sleeps 16 hours a day, it’s possible. If you leave him for a full workday with little to do but stare at the the front door, it’s even more likely. If, when you return, you plop on the couch and ignore his entreaties to play, toss a ball, or run around, youhave got an unhappy dog.

You could address your dog’s unhappiness by giving him a pill. Or you could give him more walks, endure his inquisitive sniffing, let him play with other dogs, give him things to do when you’re away and play with him or pet him when you’re home.

Read it all.