Quick Question For Those Using Anti Anxiety Meds

[greysmom]

OK. So I finally got Cash down to the lowest dose of Xanax she can manage without going off it. This isn't the drug she should have been on for the last three years. I didn't know any better and our old vet knew even less.

 

Our new vet prescribed her prozac two weeks ago. The first week was a disaster - very very spooky and anxious, seeing ghosts everywhere, jumping at every sound whether familiar or not. Granted it was horribly stormy that week, but she was so anxious she wouldn't eat. This isn't new. It was how she was three and a half years ago before she was on anything. I did manage to persuade her to eat once a day so she wasn't starving.

 

Second week, weather has been calm and clear and her behavior has rebounded to her now-normal anxious behavior. But she's not any better than she was before taking prozac. I know two weeks isn't long eough for the full effect, but shouldn't she be showing some signs of it's effects???

 

New vet wants to wean her off prozac and start her on either paxil or clomicalm, both of which are appropriate in Cash's case. It was sort of eeny meeny miny moe which SSRI we started with and prozac was it. I know it might take some trial and error.

 

I'm not looking for her to magically be "better." We work every day on desensitizing and training so I know what she can do when she's feeling good. So what kind of effect should I be looking for this soon? New vet seems pretty sure that the prozac isn't working. I'll be talking to her Tuesday regarding all this.

 

Thoughts???

[GreyTzu]

My spook really started settling down when I added Stress Free from Springtime Inc. to his diet. For the most part, he is almost a normal dog now.

[ChiliDog]

Buffy has been on melatonin, clomicalm, prozac and xanax.

 

We saw NO results with the first 3 so now we use only Xanax and only when we have to take her into high stress situations (like our M&G's etc.)

 

We ultimately ended up doing behavior mod on ourselves and let her anxieties "dictate" our behavior with her - for example the other night she got to the elevator and just stood there and shook and shook so back into the apartment we went. I didn't force her to go out, didn't do the usual pushme pullyou routine nothing. About an hour later I leashed her up and away we went - no shaking no nothing. Go figure.....

 

I have heard of people using a combination of 2 - but I don't remember which 2......

 

Ooh - off to look at Wendy's food suggestion - sounds interesting!

[Guest 4dogscrazy]

Mine is on Clomipramine, not sure if that's the same as Clomicalm? But it works! And she's been on it for over a year. No side affects either! Good luck

[Guest HHHounds]

Our vet told me that the prozac can take some time to build up in the system. Vanilla has been on it a month and she seems a bit calmer. We also have some valium to use until the prozac starts working.

[Guest HoundyGirl]

In humans, SSRIs like Prozac can take up to 6 weeks to ramp up to full effectiveness. Anxiolytics like Xanax work right away as they are absorbed. Maybe she needs more of the Xanax to get over the not-quite-effective stage of whatever SSRI you end up using. The other thing that would concern me is that Xanax can be addicting to humans.

[philospher77]

Katie is on amitriptyline (generic Elavil) and Xanax as needed. It's a tri-cyclic antidepressant, not an SSRI, so it acts in a slightly different manner. She is doing very well on it, but the initial affects are very subtle. It probably took 3 weeks before I noticed any differences, and even then, I couldn't put my finger on exactly what they were. But she is now a much more happy, playful, interactive girl!

 

Prozac can cause paradoxical effects in some dogs, which it sounds like it may be doing in yours. In that case, I would be looking at a different drug to try. Paxil is another SSRI, while clomicalm is a tricyclic (and is the same drug as clomipramine, so you can probably save some money by getting that instead), so you may want to talk to the vet about which type is worth trying next. I know that my vet started with the Elavil because "that's what they had seen the most benefit with in the most cases", but it is a bit of a guessing game until you see how your dog does on it.

[KF_in_Georgia]

Silver--and Jacey before her--used clomicalm and valium. The valium was only for the first couple of weeks, until the clomipramine (aka clomicalm) could get up to speed.

 

Silver pees/poops when left in the house (with Sam) while I'm away from home. First week on the drugs, not much difference; second week, not peeing/pooping every single day. If she's left unconfined, she pees/poops on the carpet upstairs. (If I put down puppy pads, she walked past them all so she could pee on virgin carpet.) If she's in an x-pen, she peed in the pen almost daily. She also bumped it and moved it from room to room. The day I could barely get the front door open because she'd pushed the x-pen against it, I hauled her crate down from upstairs. Magic. She doesn't resist going in there (as she did with the x-pen) and she hasn't peed in there even once.

 

The valium never was helpful, so I stopped it in week two; this was while she was still peeing in the x-pen nearly every day. Week three of the clomicalm, she was peeing a little less often, but that's when she was moving the ex-pen. The completion of week three on clomicalm corresponds to the time I started crating her and she magically stopped having issues. I don't know which--meds or crate--actually solved things. Perhaps both were needed; maybe she doesn't pee in the crate because she didn't establish a history of peeing there before the meds.

 

Anyway, I'm about to start stepping down the clomipramine. At present, she's getting two a day. I'll try two over a three-day period for a week and see how it goes. But I'll keep the crate for her when I'm not home. Although she doesn't like the crate so much that she seeks it out when I'm around, she clearly likes it better than she likes being penned or left loose. When I get home from work, she isn't even crazy. She's just lying in the crate, politely waiting for me to open it and let her out. (The second she hits the ground outside the crate, she's my leaping, crazy, oh-my-god-you're-home dog.)

[JJNg]

I know two weeks isn't long eough for the full effect, but shouldn't she be showing some signs of it's effects???

Not necessarily. You can't assess whether it's working or not after just 2 weeks. Give it at least 4-6 weeks before trying something different. How experienced is 'new vet' with behavioral meds?