Dr. Lera Clone recommends starting anxiety medication trials four weeks before travel. Try Benadryl or melatonin first, move to prescription drugs like trazodone if needed, and avoid acepromazine because it causes prolonged sedation. Check airline weight limits and get international health certificates.
Hey guys, this is Dr. Larry here at Herring Lakes Animal Hospital. Today I wanted to touch a little bit on the International Health Certificate and also a follow up about thunderstorm anxiety and dogs who get anxious with fireworks. So we had a patient come in today and they were asking for sedation for traveling because they were traveling from South Florida to Columbia. And so normally when I have a patient who needs any sort of sedation, the recommendation is that you go ahead and you start hopefully about four weeks in advance. The reason being is I usually like to try things that are more benign and not as strong in the beginning. Maybe something like Benadryl or Melatonin. They also have stuff called Rescue Remedy, which these are more benign therapies to try and help with relaxation for the patients. And then you can go as strong as something called Ace Promising. That's one of my last resorts. I usually try not to use that drug because it usually does last for a very long time and a lot of times it can cause pretty profound sedation. And so normally what you want to do is you want to have the four week time frame so that you can go ahead and give your pet the opportunity a to see how they react to the sedation. If they do seem to react to the treatment, whatever it may be in a calm setting, then what you want to do is you want to go ahead and you want to try and put them in a scenario where they are normally more anxious. And so whether that's driving or being in a public place or something like that. Because what happens is, and this is exactly how I explain it to my clients, if you're at home on a Friday night drinking a glass of wine with the lights off, on the couch, watching a movie, you're more likely to get tired versus if you're out at a bar and you're kind of like partying a little bit and that kind of stuff, then what may end up happening is you're going to get more energy, you're going to feed off the energy and the alcohol will have a different effect. So it's definitely something that I recommend to clients to try and go ahead and attempt the sedating or anxiety releasing therapies a few weeks ahead of time so that you can get a feel for it. At the end of the day you really want to try something that's as benign as possible. But sometimes there are cases where the patients need to go ahead and be on drugs that are a little stronger. You could also look at using a Thundershirt, which we've talked about in the past you saw Ginger wearing one, you could look at something called Trazodone. That's something that works well. You could also look at something called Gabapentin. That's something else. So these are a lot of different things that you could look at using for some level of sedation or anxiety reducing therapy to make it a more pleasurable experience for your pets. I always recommend if you're traveling on a plane with your pet, that you try and go ahead and have them travel in the cabin with you beforehand. You need to be aware of Sometimes you'll need a if you're traveling internationally, obviously an international health certificate, and you'll need to be aware of the weight limits that the planes or airlines will allow. So that way you can make sure it's not just the weight of the dog, but also the weight of the dog in the carrier. So those are just some things that you guys need to keep in mind. If you have any questions about this particular topic, leave it in the comments. If you found this video helpful, please give us a thumbs up. Subscribe and share. Thanks for watching and have a great day.
