My Dog Is Just Like Me
We both have anxiety!
Cherry the one-eyed beagle is a lot of things. Destructive. Dramatic. An escape artist. A whore for human affection. A human in a dog’s body. She’s also a lot like me.
We are now both on SSRIs. In humans, they are known as anti-depressants, but Cherry and I are using them as anti-anxiety drugs. My journey with anti-anxiety medication is obviously for a different publication, but today is about Cherry.
Cherry has a lot of separation anxiety. That is why she destroyed four crates and trashed my apartment multiple times. It’s why she gets diarrhea when someone she loves leaves and she doesn’t know what to do with herself. It’s why her current crate is more like a prison cell. And her vet thinks it’s why she licks her paws as much as she does.
It’s almost been a year since I adopted Cherry and she still freaks out whenever she is left alone. She barks for several minutes before settling down (unless she’s in a crate she knows she can escape from — then she goes for broke and almost injures herself in the process). Cherry also gets anxiety meeting other dogs. I can tell that she wants to befriend other dogs, she just gets really anxious once they’re up close.
When I explained all of this to the vet, she gave me a few options. She offered more conservative measures, such as pheromones and calming supplements, and then she offered fluoxetine as an option. In humans, this is known as Prozac. She explained that given my description of Cherry’s behavior, and Cherry’s breed (beagles are known for having particularly rough separation anxiety), she would definitely be okay with prescribing fluoxetine.
“I know how beagles are, I have an Aussie-beagle mix,” she said, at which I widened my eyes. She laughed.
“Yeah, I know, she’s a psycho.” Only a true animal lover would be able to take on an Australian Shepherd-Beagle mix. That’s a lot of crazy right there.
The vet went on to describe how the drug may initially affect Cherry and listed things such as subtle behavioral changes for the first couple of weeks, and GI distress (which is normal for SSRIs, trust me, I know), and then said it may take 4–6 weeks for the effects to truly set in. I agreed to the information, and the vet agreed to send in a six-week supply to my pharmacy.
I’m hoping the fluoxetine will help with Cherry’s anxiety. I hope it allows her to feel more at ease when she’s home alone, though I will try to help it through other things, such as playing soft music while I’m gone and making sure she’s in a dark room. (I’m gone at night, so that shouldn’t be hard.) Hopefully, it could ease her anxiety when getting into the car, because right now the motion sickness kicks in before the car even turns on. My passenger seat is probably still wet from her drool.
At the moment, she is curled up on her big comfy bed just a few feet from my bed. She’s surely thinking of ways she can get into trouble. She behaved too well at her vet appointment today, so she has to make up for it somehow.
