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While you may not be familiar with canine separation anxiety, you are probably familiar with its symptoms. While you are gone, your dog may do one or several of the following:

* Chew destructively
* Bark or whine
* Inappropriate urination and/or defecation
* Drool
* Pace
* Tremble
* Vomit
* … or worse

Separation anxiety is a clinical condition in your dog's brain. Your pet is not a bad dog. Your pet's behavior is the result of separation anxiety.

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But judging from the list of side effects listed on the official site, the cure may be worse than the so-called disease.

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Originally posted by M.Gregus:
Reconcile is the world's first anti-depressant for dogs. It's based on Prozac

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He's been to training school, and we do our best to train him at home as well.

He sometimes gets enraged out of nowhere, and once snapped at a young child. We had a one-on-one session with an 'animal holistic behavioralist' as well as several vets. The behavioralist gave us some handy tips which are sometimes useful, but when Banjo absolutely loses it, there is nothing we can do except hold him down, wait for it to pass, and ensure he doesn't hurt himself or anyone else.

Sorry, straight to the Vet and bye bye Jerome. I liked that cat but I am not going to search of the whys he became a potential family killer and made the decision the keep the mother and daughter, who at that time were nervous wrecks and it took them months to realize that the critter door was not Jerome entering.

I don't have the money to keep a cat on Prozac or cat psychiatry and agree with Michelle on this.

Just to add this is not on the same level as a cat or dog having a sore ear.

[ 16 November 2007: Message edited by: clersal ]

[ 17 November 2007: Message edited by: clersal ]

Here's a newsflash. No one has the right to have a pet. Animals were not created to be love-givers or human companions on our time schedule. If you're going to get a pet, you should be able to give a home to the pet where they can roam outside when they want to (who wants to live inside for their whole lives?), have lots of companionship, whether human or otherwise, etc. If you're keeping your dog or cat locked up in your house all day while you're at work and then drugging them into good behaviour on the evenings and weekends, that's no life for an animal. Their purpose in life isn't to make you happy at your convenience.

I don't think I'll ever have pets again, unless I can be home with them and spend lots and lots of time with them. And even then maybe not. The pet industry is one of the most frivolous and wasteful industries going, and it certainly doesn't do the animals any good, since so many of them wind up in shelters.

Gary Francione is a very interesting (and I think probably controversial) thinker along these lines. He believes that animals should have one overriding right - not to be considered property. Here's what he has to say that I think would cause a lot of pet owners, even ones who think of their animals as members of the family, to bristle. But I agree with him. Unfortunately, I haven't been living up to my beliefs lately.

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If, however, we did accord animals this one right not to be treated as property, we would be committed to abolishing and not merely regulating animal exploitation because our uses of animals for food, experiments, product testing, entertainment, and clothing all assume that animals are nothing but property. If we accepted that animals have the right not to be treated as our property, we would stop -completely- bringing domestic animals into existence.

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If animals are morally significant at all, then we must abolish the institution of animal property. We must stop creating and owning domestic animals or using wild animals as means to our ends. My view is that we should abolish animal slavery and not seek to reform an inherently immoral institution.

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Gary Francione: If we are serious about animal rights, we have a responsibility to stop bringing them into existence for our purposes. We would stop bringing all domestic animals into existence for human purposes.

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Originally posted by lagatta:
I fail to see how providing proper medical care to our furry friends has any influence over the woeful medical care available to AIDS sufferers in sub-Saharan Africa. I have been involved in international solidarity movements for decades, and I love my cat.

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I think the same device that enables us to see pets as part of our social sphere also enables us to see the rest of humanity as part of our social sphere.

I wonder if xenophobes have many pets?

I think the big difference in our culture today is that we have pets for the sake of having pets. Not that long ago, a cat or a dog wasn't primarily a pet, but a working member of the social organization of a family that had a valued practical role to play.