I came across this interesting article about people who put their pets on the animal equivalent of Prozac. Apparently some pets can become so depressed that the only solution in to give them the drug. The article looks at the cases of a dog, a cat and a parrot all of whom were prescribed the drug and showed a distinct improvement. The dog called Amber was experiencing panic attacks and dark moods but after being prescribed sertraline and animal anti-depressant regained all of her previous confidence. Tigger the cat became depressed when the family had a new baby. He started spraying in the house and spent hours howling. However, after being prescribed Clomicalm Tigger was once again back to his old self. Whilst the case studies are quite interesting I do wonder whether in most of these cases the same effect could be achieved simply by making changes to the animals lifestyle rather than resorting to giving them drugs. However, I may be wrong, having never had a depressed pet its hard to judge.
