Are we over medicating our dogs?

Hello, dog peeps. Jack here. Uh, just a quick one before we get into this episode. You may or may not be aware that when I'm not talking dog stuff with, uh, Max, I in fact interview people who are incarcerated in prisons across the United States on a show called One Minute Remaining: Stories from the Inmates. And that show has been nominated for an award in America. Uh, and I would love your support if you've got 60 seconds to click the link in the show notes of this episode and just vote for my show. That would be amazing if you could. Thank you very much indeed. Oh, and don't forget to verify your email address, otherwise the vote does not count. Thank you.

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It's the Dog People Podcast with your host Jack Lawrence. Secretly, I decided to start this podcast for some free dog training advice. You know Malinois seem to be like the dog at the moment. Like I think people see them on Instagram doing these incredible things. Yeah. Go oh my god that's awesome. And then I get one like, oh my God, what the fuck I done? And Max O'Neill.

You would not believe how many people I meet and I go, what made you want to get, say, an Aussie Shepherd? They go, I don't know. I go, had you met one before? They go, no. If you want to ask me how often I walk my own dog a week, it's only twice a week.

Here's the Dog People Podcast, a podcast hopefully giving you a no-nonsense approach to dog training so you never have to shed. It's okay, it's friendly. My name is Jack Lawrence, not a dog trainer, but of course Max O'Neill, the Down Under Dog Trainer. Max, we're going to be talking about medicating your dogs, because again, when it comes to medicating your dogs, there are pros and there are cons, like with everything when it comes to anything in life. So we want to have a talk about that. But again, we've got our wonderful expert here who's going to help us sort of navigate this tricky subject.

Yeah, I've got Ingrid here from Creature Connections, who is a behaviour vet. So we're very lucky to have Ingrid back because at the end of the day is whatever I feel or whatever my stance is on medication, it's outside of my scope of practice being a dog trainer, whereas it's inside your scope of practice being a behaviour vet. So we'd like to bring someone on, we can have a nice and nuanced discussion and speak about someone who's, you know, in the trenches with medication on a daily basis, and we can talk about the pros, cons, maybe when it's suitable, maybe when it's not, and even use a few examples and real-world examples in cases that we can refer to, to hopefully give you guys a better understanding, because maybe you're at that point you think you need it, Maybe your dog's already on it and you're not sure if they should be. And hopefully this provides you a little bit of information today to make that a little bit clearer for you.

I'm sure we've got people listening right now who have either been suggested to them, or maybe they've thought about it. I know, I know people who have got dogs who are on certain medications to calm them down. So Ingrid, again, case-by-case basis, but if someone's listening to this and they're going, I think my dog needs medication, obviously they should go see a vet and talk about that. But not just this podcast. Yeah, not just listen to us. But what would be the signs, do you think, where you go, okay, this might need more than just the dog needs more mental stimulation or more boundaries or whatnot? Where do you think that line comes in? We go, okay, there could be something else here we need to deal with.

Again, a lot of factors play into that. There's no single factor that would be like, oh yeah, definitely no, definitely yes. So one of the things where I might consider it earlier rather than later, as in, in terms of, I look at the, you know, the look at a case is, um, if there's self-harm, like a dog panics to the point where they hurt themselves. Also, if, um, if it's clearly, um, what we, as in people, would be like, um, OCD. So if it's really strong obsessive compulsive behaviour. We don't call it obsessive generally in, in our animal patients, just because We don't know what they're thinking. They can't tell us, but yeah, it's similar. So if it's a really, you know, those behaviour patterns that are just very strong that it can't be interrupted.

I had a dog that fits that category. Um, and there's going to be a few dogs that we mentioned today and we, some dogs' names will be mentioned who are happy to, some dogs not so much. Um, but I had a pug client and it had an obsessive compulsive spin. We'd just do it for 5 to 6 minutes at a time. I just could not break it. They'd seen a number of other trainers before they saw myself. And I said, look, I'm going to have a crack at this, but for me, this is very much in the abnormal category in terms of frequency, intensity, and duration of this. This dog was having 10 of these episodes a day. And I was like, look, we can try a few different approaches. But pretty quickly I was like, I'm pretty good at my job, but this ain't stopping. This is definitely one of those cases where I said, I'm not going to prescribe anything to you because this is not in my scope of practice, nor do I know many different medications at all, but I think this is worth seeing one of these people who are good at this. And my recommendation was not to go see just the general vet, someone like yourself who's a behaviour specialist, behaviour vet who works in this. And lo and behold, they went and saw that person, got onto the medication, didn't work immediately, takes a bit of time to build up in the system. And then within a month, she's like, oh, like different dog, it's just stopped. That was one of those ones where medication, when, you know, a lot of training people In that, sorry, in the training community, you're very much anti-medication entirely. And I just want to make that very clear from the go. That's not myself. I think in conjunction with training and sometimes on its own, it can be the right thing. It just often gets overprescribed, but we'll get to that. But in this case, for this pug, it solved the issue within a month. Frequency, it went down to like once in a blue moon. Even the intensity, when it started, you're able to go, hey, like, stop that. And oh yeah, okay. And then I said duration, it'd be maybe one revolution and the dog would go, why am I doing this? It's almost habitual that eventually faded away rather than this obsessive compulsive And the dog had started to like give its body a complete imbalance. It almost looked like it had scoliosis because it went to the left so much and all its muscles contorted and everything. Like the dog started walking around like a bloody question mark looking thing. It was insane.

That's probably the— those are the straightforward.

Yeah.

Like, yeah. Okay. Yeah.

I mean, from someone I know, so they— so there's someone that I know that's got a dog and it is on medication. They got on a medication because they say it's fearful of people. And it was crying a lot, barking a lot. And I personally don't agree with the medication because I know that dog's life and how much mental stimulation it gets and how much it gets out. And I just feel impersonally, I go, I just think the dog is stressed because it's not getting to do anything. Which I'm sure you would, Max, as a trainer, would see all the time. People saying, oh, I think my dog needs medication. You're like, well, actually, no, I think you just actually need to do XYZ.

Yeah. We always go, let's try this first and then go to that.

But my question, I suppose, I suppose it's like they've obviously taken it to a vet to get that medication. It's like my question would be, well, you know, are the vets going through the questions saying, well, what's the dog's life like? Talk to— talk me through what the dog does. Because I know if they explain that, should, in my opinion, go, well, have you tried this first before we just give the dog the medication?

I would think so, to an extent. So, I mean, I don't know how long your behaviour consults are, but they're probably not 15 minutes either.

No, they're a couple of hours.

Yeah.

So, yes. So my initial is Usually 1.5 to 2 hours, and I have like a very comprehensive questionnaire filled out before, so there's a lot of information. And in general practice, that time's not there. Like, they literally don't have the time.

Yeah, they don't have it.

Yeah, if you, you know, you've got a 20-minute consult, there's only so much you can cover, and I don't think they are able to get the information they would really need.

And it also relies on the the people being honest as well, I suppose. Yeah. Everyone flowers up while they do a little bit more. It's like, oh yeah, we do this and this. And when you really look at what they actually do, you're like, well, actually, no, you don't do that. So maybe they're not getting the full information as well from the people who are going to them. And people want it. People want a quick fix and just want— I just want the dog to stop crying.

It's not, it's not limited to behavior medication.

It's everything.

A lot of medical issues. Like, just give me a tablet.

Yeah. Fix it.

Yeah.

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I think another thing that contributes to the potential overprescription is I think if we look at the dynamic in the, in the pet space between dog training and vets, right, I feel like there's definitely a world where They can work in conjunction with each other, but often find that the referral is quite one directional, as in where, you know, or myself and definitely as a training community, we're pretty happy to go, oh, you should go get your dog looked at for health, like particularly for things like reactivity and stress issues. We go, hey, like, have you ever thought maybe your dog's walking around on a bad knee, they've got a rough tummy and an itchy coat, and they're just cranky? And we often find we refer clients that way. And I know we get lots of clients from vets, which we're very thankful for, but I often find that a lot of vets aren't referring people back out to the training community. So it— so the answer does become medication. And right or wrong, I don't know, but it could be one of those cases where if you're constantly carrying around a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. And maybe if the— unfortunately, if you're not referring people to a training space, you go, well, I don't know much about this or fulfillment or sport or this and that, but I've got this long list of medications. Let's prescribe it. And I agree with you. I just saw a case this week, which we'll discuss, which is a dog who, again, not a vet, but damn, this dog was overprescribed. There was no need for that dog to be on absolutely anything. The dog I saw this week was, um, it was a 7 or 8 month old Border Collie. And I see 1 or 2 cases like this a week where it was, you know, we spoke before about what a normal case looks like. This is the most atypical Border Collie I've ever seen. 7, 8 month old, happy-go-lucky, exuberant. A little bit barky on the lead, like, oh, that thing's moving, I should herd it. And they'd been to the vet and the vet had given it like a short-acting, um, medication, like I think it was trazodone or something like that, to take before every single walk, as well as like a— I think it was on Zacton as well, just like an everyday medication just to be in its system and calm down this dog. And it, you know, it had done— Well, sometimes I see it do nothing. Like with this dog, it barely did anything except when it was on the trazodone, it was pretty flattened out. Then I see other, other dogs that are just these zombies because it's just, they put it on such a high dosage or an incorrect medication or something. And it's just, and in this case of the Border Collie, like it is with many others, it wasn't the answer. They go, we've been doing the medication for 2 months now. The vet said it should have kicked in, but we're not seeing anything. And just through simply teaching this dog, let's just teach it loose leash walking and some clarity and reward systems and giving it something else to think about, the issue largely stopped presenting. It's a tough one, but we see it a lot. It sounds like you've seen that with your friend and you probably see that too, right?

There's a couple of, so like that's, and that's coming a bit more from the vet side. There's a couple of things that come to mind in, like, in relation to that. So one is because, you know, most vets in general, like in vets in general practice, they may even say, okay, go and see that trainer and work with them. But there is no, you don't know if they do that or not. Um, and they might be quite, you know, be like, oh yes, of course. Yes, of course.

But then for whatever reason, oh yeah, we've worked with a trainer. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, we have.

And one thing I do find that I, I even struggle sometimes with my clients is getting timely feedback in terms of, and like, I try to hammer that in literally. Is I need you to talk to me. I need your input if we start medication. It should never turn a dog into a zombie. This is not the right medication. The only time I may consider that is acceptable is, again, if a dog is storm-phobic to the point where they just slice themselves open.

Yeah, of course.

I'd rather have them asleep. But in terms of every day, that is not the right medication if the dog looks like a zombie. That's not, um.

Because it's only— is it only just supposed to take the edge off, not flatline them, basically?

Absolutely. Yeah, that shouldn't be. It's like, I mean, you know, a lot of people take medication, they don't turn into sleeping all day zombies.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's not right.

Yes.

And then I find it, it's not easy to get people to actually do that back and forth and okay, right medication. Is it the right dose? Do we need to change medication? So because it takes a little bit of fiddling around with In the beginning. There is no one-size-fits-all. Yeah, like even if you have the same breed with the same abnormal behavior at the same age, doesn't mean they're going to do well on the same medication if they need it. Those are those 2 things that come to mind.

I certainly don't think it comes from a bad place, and you're right, sometimes you're like, like, what's— exactly, it's just like, it's, it's genuinely going like, I think this might be the best case for the dogs, and it's just a, it's just a tough one. But there's, there's so many different potential outcomes, and there's, there's heaps of great things you mentioned. Mentioned there. And you're right, like, if, if you've tried medication, you're like, okay, I'm in the spot where I definitely think my dog's behaviour is abnormal in terms of, you know, frequency, intensity, duration, all these things. I've seen a behaviour vet and they agree, and we've been on a medication, but it hasn't worked one way or another. I mean, there's been no change, or we've seen the wrong kind of change. And quite often, like you said, it's tinkering. It's finding, okay, well, let's go back to the vet. Let's not— whatever you're doing, do not stop the medication right away, please. Yes, please don't do that. Just, yeah, anyway, just don't do it. Um, but sometimes it's worth going back for a second consult and going, hey, like, we might need to transition off this and onto something else, and we might need to change around the dosage. And I, you know, I'm not oversharing, but speaking from experience here, I was on antidepressants for a couple years a few years ago, and I know the first one I tried was absolutely shit for me, no good at all. And then when we changed to a different one and then found the right dosage, I was like, oh my God, I feel clear and amazing for the first time in years. And sometimes it could be like that for dogs. And as Ingrid said as well, you could have 2 littermates who are both 35-kilo golden retriever males, and one and the other might— you could present with the exact same issue, and the different medications have totally different roles. And again, God, I feel like I'm this drug-dependent man at this point, but I've got ADHD. So does my best friend Blake.

Okay, so do I.

Yeah, yeah.

And, uh, I feel like I'm the odd one out now.

We're both 30 years old, same, pretty similar height and weight, both have the same ADHD disorder, and I'm prescribed one, he prescribed the other. And rightly or wrongly, one day we went, do you want to switch a tablet and see how we feel? Yeah, as, as most people do with ADHD. And each of us felt absolutely shit on each other's medication.

Yeah, we're not advocating for you sharing drugs.

Exactly.

Stay on the one you're prescribed. Yeah.

And each— and I feel really clear-headed and focused on mine. I felt shocking on his, and vice versa. And Is this a good example of you can find the right or wrong one? And there's, you know, in the same way that sometimes human brains need a little bit of assistance to sometimes balance out chemically and operate as intended, so too can your dogs.

But when we're talking medication with your dogs, I feel like probably there should be a bit of a checklist before we go. Medication, like with anything in life, shouldn't be the first thing we go to. Same as when we were talking about desexing dogs. It's not, as you said, it's not my first thing I go to. We say, okay, what else can we look at? It should be a kind of a checklist, like with your Border Collie. Like if you're sitting there with a Border Collie who's 7 months old and is a bit—

He's excited.

He's a bit excitable and is a bit of a lunatic. Well, yes, you've bought a Border Collie that is—

was—

Yeah, I'm not sitting there, wow, I've never seen that.

I've got an 8-month Malinois and he just will not slow down. I'm going to medicate him. No. So there should be this checklist of, okay, right, what is the issue? As you said, if it's insane and the dog is hurting itself, then yes, that's case in itself. But if you've got a dog that is exhibiting certain behaviours and you're like, oh, this seems a bit much. Okay, well, let's see, you know, the process of have we tried XYZ? Is the dog mentally stimulated enough? Dog trainer, I would say, port of call first for any behavioural stuff. Because then a dog trainer will say to you, no, actually, I think there's more here.

Yeah. There's things you can try.

Yeah.

I think even the first port of call, if possible, would be, are their needs met? Exactly. Like, you know, how many behavior problems—

Oh, so many stem from it.

Probably wouldn't be a thing if people are able to meet their dog's needs. You don't even have to go to the training.

No, you can work that out yourself. Yeah. I mean, like with Kira, when I got her, I mean, she was just highly destructive and it was because she was bored and she needed something to do. Her brain wasn't being worked and she was just being a dog and finding herself something to do because her brain wasn't being activated.

Unnatural lifestyles lead to unnatural behaviors and just letting your dog lead a biological appropriate lifestyle honestly sorts out like so much, it's insane. We've talked about how you can have medication can do all of the work with our first example with the pug. We can talk about how it can do none of the work like with the border collie. But I think what's probably the most common is it can work in conjunction with training.

Yeah.

You know, medication often isn't this miracle pill, but again, I'll use my own example. My last dog, my Weimaraner, we medicated him for about a year. So As a lot of Weimaraners do, they are very separation anxious. It's a— being very handler attached is a breed trait. When they're originally bred, they're a gundog, and the people in Germany that bred them going, oh, we love these gundogs and whatnot that we've got, but they always follow a scent and never come back. So let's maybe start to breed from the ones that are a little bit more clingy. And then at some point through years and years and years of— It's gone over the top. Yeah, of breeding, it's become a very exaggerated character trait and I'll say, I don't know, more than half of the whines that I see are pretty owner clingy and separation anxious. So we're obviously very aware of this. We knew what the mum and dad were like, we knew what the breed were like, and we're like, sweet. So from day dot, we were very much working on like relationship balance and gentle separate, all this stuff. And we were going awesome till about 6 months when with our threshold training, we pushed for that little bit of a half an hour. We're like, he's done 3 and a half, let's do 4. All we regret doing for.

Yeah.

And, um, it was just too much too soon. He went ballistic, had the biggest hysterical fit. We came home and, and same. And we tried to repair it naturally first, but it was getting to the stage where he was drooling in excess of a liter in his crate. It was filling up the black bottom and spilling out the sides. It was getting to the stage where he was biting the crate and bending it and cutting his gums up, not intentionally self-mutilating, but still causing himself pretty drastic harm.

Yeah.

And again, I see separation anxiety all the time. I train it, and I went, hey, I need some help. And my training approach wouldn't have worked without medication. The medication alone wouldn't have worked without my training approach. But the 2 things together, he was awesome by the end of it. But it took 12 months. He had to wean him onto the medication, spend enough time on it. And even when we got to where we wanted to go, we're like, well, let's not just start to wean off immediately. Let's make this like a consistent thing. And all up, it was 12 months before he was offered. And we were, we were, I guess, fortunate in the sense that the Zactin that he was on, we were able to wean him down until he was zero. But there's plenty of people who you might find, whatever dosage you're on, let's call it 30 milligrams a day, you might find you wean down and they don't need 30, but they can't handle zero. They might sit at this in-between. Is that fair to say?

Yes. And you don't know at the beginning of the journey if— where it's going to lead exactly.

Yeah.

But that's, um, yeah, that's pretty much it. And I think one thing too, because you mentioned before, is like, come to mind when you talked about training and medication, is that the aim of medication in cases where it's not like, you know, obvious that we need to do something urgently now, it's helping the dog to get into a headspace where they can learn how to deal alternative behaviours or how to, you know, had to become more confident to deal with a situation they can't do now. So that, that is really, that's really the role of medication because there is factors that might be the dog or the environment that won't let it happen otherwise. Yes.

Yeah. So what I found interesting about what you were saying with your Weimaraner was when you brought in the medication and the training, it still took 12 months to sort of, you know, get things under control. We started seeing results really quickly, but for that to become like a really ingrained pattern of his where he's like, okay, I am a dog who's fine on But I said, that's the thing, I was like, you know, again, I think there's probably a lot of people out there that just want that quick fix and they're just like, just give the dog the drugs to stop this from happening. The goal shouldn't just be to completely and utterly suppress. I don't think it shouldn't just be a case of we're just going to pump you with drugs just to stop you doing this.

Anyway, we just wanted to have that chat today, guys, because I've, I find certainly being more in the training community that, and especially more so with the dog enthusiasts, it's like, oh, we'd never do medication. And there's Almost from the training community towards the vet and medication side, there can be almost this bit of a headbutt, militant sort of, yeah, headbutt sort of, sort of, uh, attitude towards it. And to say maybe just be a little bit more open, because especially if you have been dealing with something for a while, it could be the thing standing in your way. And there's no shame in admitting, like, I'm sitting here going, I'm a professional dog trainer and my own dog needed it for a bit. And this is what it is like. It's, yeah, it's, it's, it's at the time, but it's not a big deal.

Yeah. And it's not because Like you failed at what you do.

Yes.

Yeah. I succeeded because of it, not in spite of it. Yeah.

And that's the other thing. Yeah. People see themselves as failures and yeah. So yeah, it's about what's best for you. Again, case-by-case basis. If you've got any questions, as always, jump on the Dog People Podcast Facebook page for us. But Ingrid, thanks so much indeed for helping us navigate through this difficult topic. You're not welcome. She's like, I'm never coming back.

And you've got aircon.

The Dog People Podcast is a Mashed Pumpkin production hosted by Jack Lawrence and Max O'Neill. Edited, produced, and audio production by Jack Lawrence.

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