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Dogs on the verge of a nervous breakdown By Neri Livneh Tags: prozac, Dogs, depression Healthy, with a shining golden coat, Sesame jumped from the fifth floor, plunging to her death from the cement railing straight to the parking lot. The lifeless body of the mixed Vizsla bitch was discovered by her owner, who had adopted her as a puppy nine and a half years earlier. What caused Sesame, who led a good life in Herzliya - four daily walks, high-class cuisine and lots of games - to jump to her death? "There is no such thing as suicide when it comes to dogs," says behavioral veterinarian Noa Harel. "Dogs don't try to kill themselves out of depression or pain. They rescue themselves from what looks to them like mortal danger, during an anxiety attack." Had Sesame's owner been aware of this possibility, she might have prevented her dog's death by providing canine anti-anxiety pills, a current practice in the United States that is beginning to catch on in Israel. Popular at the moment are chewable beef-flavored Reconcile, made by Prozac manufacturer Eli Lilly, and Clomicalm by Novartis, the canine version of Anapranil (a drug used to treat anxiety and depression). The major drug companies are now working on the development of the canine version of Xanax, Clonex, et al. The main problem from which most of the dogs suffer is separation anxiety. In nature, dogs live in packs, with a leader and a clear hierarchy. From the moment we plant them in our apartments, each owner becomes a leader, at least as far as the dog is concerned. When we leave the house, the dog feels abandoned and lost. Veterinarians suggest many methods of dealing with various anxiety disorders, from leaving the television on to scattering a large number of toys all over the house. But occasionally, in order to enable the start of behavior therapy, the dog's basic anxiety level must be lowered drastically. And that can be done only with drugs. Advertisement Life-saver A year and a half ago I adopted Shoshana, a black, curly-haired mongrel I found tied to the fence of Meir Park. On the first day she spent at my house, she defecated on my bed. During the next five months she destroyed all the electrical wiring, doorstops and remote control devices in the house. Two armchairs and one sofa and the colored cookbooks on the bottom shelf of the bookcase were destroyed when she stayed home with a babysitter while I was traveling abroad. In the end, I had no choice but to shut her into the (very large) balcony and to keep her supplied with bones and toys every time I went out. And then it turned out that Shoshana knew how to open sliding doors. All that time I kept hearing from those around me, including my neighbor David Edgard, a dog trainer and behavior expert, and Rami Tamir, my veterinarian, that Shoshana has an unusual nature - to the point that I began to suspect her of being manipulative and two-faced, like a teacher's pet. After the fact, when I came to interview Tamir about the use of psychiatric drugs to treat the anxieties of four-legged creatures, he surprised me by saying that he seriously considered treating dogs' fear and anxiety with drugs. Where exactly was he before I was forced to raid Ikea in order to refurnish the house? Had I come to him today with the same problem, he says, he might have written some anti-anxiety prescription for Shoshana and then gone on to behavior therapy. Although Shoshana calmed down, many people choose to return their dogs because of their inability to handle behavior problems, and sending a dog to a kennel sometimes means having it killed. "Psychiatric drugs for dogs are often life-saving," says veterinarian Doron Neri, "because the main reason why people get rid of their dogs is behavior problems." Treatment with anti-depressants is beginning to catch on in Israel, but slowly. In the veterinary hospital at Beit Dagan there is a department for treating animal behavior problems, but there are still no psychologists or psychiatrists for dogs as there are in the U.S.. Nor, thank God, is there a super-nanny for dogs who knows how to solve every canine problem while running at the head of the pack and talking about invading the dog's territory. There are only three behavioral veterinarians in Israel; one of them works in Jerusalem and Beit Dagan, the other two in the Tel Aviv area. "Medication prevents the dog from hurting itself, and I have already treated several cases of dogs who jumped from a balcony or a window because of an anxiety attack that might have been averted," says Harel, who has a clinic in Ramat Gan. "One dramatic case I recently encountered is an elderly couple, a man and his dog. The former has not been sleeping for three months because the latter doesn't stop whining, breathing heavy and walking from room to room all night long." Like all owners whose dogs are being treated for behavioral problems in Harel's clinic, the man was asked to fill out a detailed questionnaire about the dog's behavior, his health, his eating habits, his daily schedule and relationships within the family. Later he was invited with his dog to a series of meetings for diagnostic purposes. In this case the dog was found to have "a disturbance similar to Alzheimer's, whose clinical manifestation for dogs is a loss of cognitive ability," explains Harel. "The dog can forget where his food bowl is or stop recognizing his owner. Sometimes he walks and bumps into a wall because he doesn't remember the difference between a wall and a door, and if he leaves the house alone, he doesn't remember how to return." Harel prescribed an anti-depressant for the dog. In addition, she taught the owner all kinds of simple games to play with the dog, for example distinguishing between bowls of different colors, which help check the cognitive deterioration. She also gave him a drug against Parkinson's that has been found to be very effective in treating canine Alzheimer's or dementia. Within a month, he and his owner went back to sleeping at night. Canine obsession Anyone with a dog believes his dog has a soul (after all, we wouldn't love our dogs so much if we didn't think so). But veterinarians do not use the expression "psychological problems" and are very careful to refrain from an anthropomorphic approach, tending to divert the discussion from questions about the dog's inner world to a concrete approach in which training and drug treatment can repair specific problems such as obsessive behavior, phobias, eating disturbances, dementia and separation anxiety. Veterinarian Michal Stauber says that one common problem among dogs, obsessive-compulsive disorder, stems from the need of a bored dog who is left alone at home to channel his energy. Dogs suffering from this disorder may lick or bite themselves until they bleed, while others may hysterically chase their own tails for hours on end. "You have to remember that it is we who are mainly to blame for the dogs' behavior problems," says Stauber. "Dogs suffer as a result of these problems, and it is not correct to say they don't report them; if you know how to listen, you'll hear. It's important to remember that not everything we consider abnormal behavior really is abnormal. For example, barking - for a dog that is totally natural behavior, an instinct for guarding its territory. But then you take them to a fifth-floor apartment; every five minutes someone passes on the stairwell and the dog barks and the neighbors complain. The separation anxiety would not appear either if we didn't lock the dog inside the apartment by itself." The psychiatric drugs that are given to dogs are divided into three groups, as for humans. "The first are sedatives for immediate use, like Xanax," says Stauber. "There's a regular group of clients who come for a prescription before Israel's Independence Day, because of the fireworks. Many dogs are afraid of noises, an important trait for survival, which in nature helps the dog escape from situations that endanger him. Clomicalm is a drug for the medium range, between several weeks and three months, and is very suitable for situations of anxiety or changes. I have a client who moved from a quiet street to a noisy street in Tel Aviv, and her dog became nervous. He began to walk around the house and cry, and now he takes Clomicalm and is completely calm. The third type of drug is Prozac and similar medications, drugs that begin to take effect only after several weeks and are meant for more profound disturbances." In nature, dogs attack each other, but such normal behavior in the municipal park is liable to create problems. If a dog is aggressive toward human beings, the owner is responsible, say the experts. "They encouraged such behavior because they themselves are aggressive," says trainer Edgard, "or because they didn't learn to control their dog and the result is that the dog learned to control them." "A well-trained dog is one who, if you take his bowl away in the middle of eating, doesn't utter a sound," explains Stauber. "But I have dogs coming to me for treatment who try to bite their owners when they go to feed them. I had a woman who was scared to death of her dog, which weighed two kilos and didn't let her sit on the sofa. I wanted to treat the dog with behavior and drug therapy, but they preferred to give it away. It's a shame, because canine aggression against people can be very successfully treated." Riddled with fears In his clinic in Ramat Gan, one of the largest in the country, veterinarian Doron Neri treats all the problems that can be called "psychological." "I had a dog that literally was afraid of his own shadow, and because of that was afraid to leave the house at night. When he did go out and suddenly saw his shadow he would become paralyzed and start crying. What saved him was Prozac; after three months of treatment the dog stopped being afraid. I also had dogs here who were afraid of stairs or balconies or elevators. One of the most common problems is dogs who bark a lot, and then the neighbors complain. Once, 30 years ago, they would remove the dog's vocal cords, imagine the cruelty. But today there's a special collar for dogs that releases air every time the dog barks, which is a painless way for the dog to learn to stop barking. It's totally different from the electric collar used by certain dog trainers." Drug therapy was very successful for Rusty, aged five, says Michel Garber of Ramat Hasharon. "I took him in from the street when he was slightly over four months old. He's a mixture of border collie and collie, very handsome and smart, but time did not erase his traumas, and he is riddled with fears of noises, fireworks. In the winter he gets depressed and a day or two before it rains I get ready. Last year it reached a point where nobody slept at home. The rain would begin and he would start to tremble, drool, run from side to side; he really lost it. Doron Neri treated him with Xanax, which at first made him listless, but afterward we got to the right dosage and he got through the winter much better." David Levine, who brings his dog Ion for treatment in Neri's clinic, tried every possible treatment and in the end decided to tolerate the dog as he is. The Levine home in Ramat Hasharon is entirely enslaved to the needs of Ion, who was brought from one of the kennels as a puppy about eight years ago. He climbs on the kitchen counter, takes pots down from the stove, opens every door and defecates everywhere. "He has always suffered from separation anxiety, which expressed itself in the fact that he can't be left alone for even a minute without getting panicky," says Levine. "We lived at the time in a private house and it bothered us less, because he would walk around in the yard and take it apart, but at least we could leave the house. He was trained for two months at the kennel in Kibbutz Afikim and returned with the commands they taught him, and with a massive cage. Within a week, he had taken apart the front gate of the cage; and he took apart, within a day, the gate of the replacement cage that we bought afterward." Ion received four types of drug therapy: Xanax, Prozac, Clomicalm and Valium. "The last pill was something that was supposed to be strong enough to knock out horses and elephants, but it didn't affect him," says Levine. "There was nothing left to destroy in the house, and we got used to cleaning up after him every time we return home. We decided to put him down four times, but we can't bring ourselves to do it. We came to the conclusion that we have no choice but to accept the situation and understand that there's no point in buying new things for the house for many years to come." "Many people are not willing to make the effort involved in behavior therapy and would prefer to find some miracle drug," says Yaniv Osem, head of the Afikim kennels and a specialist in treating anxiety and behavior disorders in dogs. "But you have to begin with training, and only when the situation is really serious do I recommend combining it with drug therapy; for that purpose I send the people to vets." "There are cases that are untreatable," says Harel, who has already had several cases of dogs who killed themselves. "We once came to see a dog who had jumped from the second floor. The owners were not home and the people who found him and called me think that it was because of the noise of fireworks that he heard. I had people who came with a bitch who organized getaways for herself from the ground floor window. She apparently had become accustomed to the window bars, got stuck and hung upside down for hours." How would you treat fear of noises, for example? "One way is by gradual exposure to noise - there are tapes of recorded noises that can be used - in combination with sedatives. But the most important thing is to pay attention to our own behavior when the dog starts to panic. Usually people see a panicky dog and try to calm it by petting it, but the dog sees the petting as a positive reward, which actually causes a reinforcement of its panic reactions. Sometimes a change in the reaction of the owner is enough to solve the problem." Doggie diets Aside from stuffing them with anti-anxiety drugs, Americans are trying out another craze of their own on their pets: weight-reducing drugs. "It hasn't reached Israel yet," says Harel. "Prozac has the side effect of reducing appetite, but it is not used for that purpose. There are species, like golden retrievers and Labradors, who come with built-in eating disorders; they simply ingest everything around them if they aren't supervised. There are dogs who take it to the extreme and eat even what's inedible. Plastic and stones for example. There are also dogs who experienced hunger in the past and are now trying to make up for what was lacking. I had a dog in for treatment who destroyed several things in the house, broke objects, fled from the house and broke into a supermarket. I discovered that the dog was being treated with medications that increase his hunger and that was why he was behaving like that - he was simply hungry." Are there anorexic dogs? "There are dogs that stop eating when they're sick and there are all kinds of things you can give them in order to arouse their appetite, but I've never come across an anorexic dog." Katya, Lior's mixed Labrador, latched onto him when he was living on a kibbutz in the south. She was then 11 months old. Four years ago Lior moved with the dog to Yad Eliyahu and discovered that she is afraid to leave the house at night. The drug treatment prescribed by the vet helped the dog, but after several months, mainly for lack of funds, Lior decided to stop the treatment, and all the problems returned. "What helped in the end was that I moved in with my partner and she brought with her a small mixed Jack Russell terrier and that, for some reason, solved Katya's problems." In England, doctors prescribe pets for their patients as a cure for depression, anxiety and loneliness. It turns out that this recommendation can be used for dogs too. "In 80 percent of cases, the best solution for all the problems is to adopt another dog," says Stauber, who herself is raising two dogs and several cats. "It solves the problems of boredom and separation anxiety, and a large percentage of the fears." Stauber, a totally conventional vet, sometimes treats dogs with acupuncture, Bach flower remedies and especially the Rescue remedy, which she claims is very effective.W Bookmark to del.icio.us   Safe haven reached 200 fleeing Georgia after the outbreak of hostilities arrive at Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport. Fatal heartbreak Disabled man dies of heart attack after his girlfriend was arrested by Immigration Police.

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