A good medication fit allows your pet to maintain their personality while finding more joy in daily activities, maintaining adequate food intake, and having stable gastrointestinal output. Triggers should become more tolerable, reactions less frequent and intense, recovery quicker, and responses to cued behavior more reliable. Frequency of body language associated with fear, anxiety, or aggression should decrease, and that of relaxation should increase.

Some medications are intended to affect your pet’s daily baseline whereas others are used to affect them short-term for specific events.

Many medications can be ordered through our online pharmacy or picked up from the practice. You also have a legal right to have a prescription sent to the pharmacy of your choice; consider using services like GoodRx to find the best prices. Many medications have generic alternatives that are more cost-effective and have not been shown to be inferior to name-brand products.

Some FDA-approved canine-tailored products include Reconcile (fluoxetine), Clomicalm (clomipramine), Sileo (dexmedetomidine), and Anipryl (selegiline). Some people find that the name brand can be more effective for some individuals.

Each pet is a unique, complex individual. Their individual metabolism influences how they will respond to a medication.

The total catalog of behavior-modifying medications can be thought of as a set of unlabeled keys, and your pet's brain can be thought of as a lock. Some keys will look like they’ll be a better fit for the lock than others, but we won’t actually know if it fits until we try. 

It's important to note that there are no one-size-fits-all solutions, and there are no guarantees of success. There will always be backup plans (Plans B, C, D) for each case if our first plan isn’t a good fit, however nobody should feel obligated to completely exhaust every potential combination.

Medications take effect over variable time periods and are used for variable lengths of time.

Situational: used for hours to weeks for specific, short-term situations, taking effect within one to two doses

Maintenance: used for months to years to elicit and support long-term changes, taking effect after several weeks of use

Pain Medication: used for a few weeks to months to evaluate your pet’s response, or used life-long to reduce internal painful stimuli

Many medications are effective within a dose range. Most often we will start with a low dose to check your dog's overall tolerance and check for GI side effects. Then we will increase into the low end of the expected therapeutic range. After an observation period, we may further adjust the dose.

Monitor for behavior changes and adverse effects. For short-acting medications, note the time to onset if you notice any changes. We may gradually increase the dose over time until you see a beneficial noticeable effect, encounter an intolerable adverse effect, or reach the high end of the dosing range with no noted effects. Reach out to provide an update with any of these outcomes.

Food can influence some medications’ effects. For shorter acting medications, it can delay time to onset of effects and reduce peak intensity. Administer situational medications about 90 minutes before a known stressor begins. As soon as your dog gets excited, they won’t absorb the medication at the same rate so additional effects become less likely. 

For longer-acting daily medications, if lethargy is observed after the first two weeks and affect their daily activity, recheck with the doctor. Sometimes moving once-daily dosing to the evening can mitigate this problem.

Organ function should be monitored while using medications because if the pet’s metabolism is negatively affected, the dose may build up in their body and cause adverse effects. It’s also possible for medications to negatively effect organ function over time. For some medications, it’s advisable to conduct initial baseline lab tests before starting long-term medications, then recheck liver and kidney function every 6-12 months. We can discuss sedation for this if appropriate for your situation.

Any medication that you’ve been using daily should be weaned gradually to avoid adverse effects and rebound behavior. Some pets whose behavior arises from early-life factors or genetics may not successfully be weaned off medication.

It is a good idea to extend medication use for a period long enough for the changes in behavior to become a new habit. There is no magic time when this happens, however six months of stable and desirable behavior outcomes is a reasonable timeline to keep in mind before considering trying to reduce medication. This should be done slowly over time for the best chance at maintaining the beneficial changes.