Pill-Popping Pets
July 9th, 2008 Posted in Reptile PetsHe chases deer. He is and this should be remembered when discussions of cases like his blunder into the thickets of cognitive ethology, normative psychology and intraspecies solipsism a good dog. A 3-year-old German shepherd, all rangy limbs and skittering paws, he patrols the hardwood floors and wall to wall carpets of a cul de sac home in Lafayette, Calif., living with Michelle Spring, a nurse, and her husband, Allan, a retired airline pilot. Max fields tennis balls with his dexterous forelegs and can stand on his hindquarters to open the front door. He loves car rides and will leap inside any available auto, even ones belonging to strangers. Housebroken, he did slip up once indoors, but everybody knows that the Turducken Incident simply wasn’t his fault.
I arrived the night Max was to receive his first pill. He picked at the food in his chow bowl while the Springs sat at the kitchen table discussing his problems. For starters, there was his overpowering need to be near people, especially Allan. If they put Max outside, he quickly relieved himself and then rushed back indoors; he raced into rooms that Allan was about to occupy; he rested his head against the bathroom door during his master’s ablutions.
Allan went upstairs and returned moments later with a bit of ground turkey and a pill. He hid the pill in the meat and extended his hand to Max, who had stopped spinning. The medicine was chemically identical to clomipramine, a tricyclic antidepressant used in human psychiatric care, but it came in a green-and-white Novartis box brightened by the picture of a happy yellow lab. This wasn’t Anafranil, the brand name for the human version of the drug; it was Clomicalm, just for dogs.
Tags: chase, dogs, herd, love, paws, Pet, pets