The anxious basset hound-pit bull

When my wife Martha took Madge to the vet recently, she was very frightened and cowered in the corner. Our vet suggested  that she might benefit from taking anti-anxiety medication.  This isn't a new idea. Back in the 1990s, dog owners have been giving their pets drugs psychotropic drugs originally developed for humans (a trend that satirist Tom McNichol parodied in his 1996 book Barking at Prozac). 

                                                   Madge and Joey take an afternoon snooze


But as a human who has actually taken psychotropic medications--Zoloft, for example--for years, however, I'm really against against the idea of giving them to our pets. We don't really understand how these drugs work in the human brain, let alone in an animal's. It's one thing for me to make an informed choice to experiment with my brain chemistry, but Madge isn't capable of giving her consent. And unlike me, she can't complain about the side effects of such a medication to her doctor, nor can she decide to wean herself off it, if those side effects seem to outweigh the benefits.  And besides, Madge's anxiety is a part of her unique personality. Dogs are like people--you have to accept them for who they are, not who you'd like them to be, or who you might be able to change them into. I think it's better to try to work with her to assuage her fears and help her to become better able to cope with the world.