Animal Health

By Laura Brown
Pharmacist Manager of Customer Care
Wedgewood Pharmacy

Reprinted courtesy of the Partnership for Personalized Prescriptions.
 

Does your pet have anxiety or fearful behaviors?

Like humans, pets can develop anxiety and fears. Fireworks are considered a normal tradition on holidays for some cultures but can also frequently trigger anxiety in pets and animals.

What are some common causes of anxiety in pets, and what should I look for?

Anxiety is described or defined as a “phycological, physiological, and behavioral state induced in animals and humans by a threat to well-being or survival, either actual or potential.”

Common causes of anxiety in animals include loud noises, threatening/unfamiliar situations, travel, and cruelty, abuse, or neglect, but anxiety can occur in animals from any background

By Andrew Kantor

There's an interesting case study in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine about a dog (juvenile, mixed breed) who presented with cyanosis, tachycardia, tachypnea, lethargy, exercise intolerance, and aggression when touched on the head.

There's a lot going on there. To cut to the chase, a methylene blue IV administration (1 mg/kg) took care of the problem, which turned out to be a pair of gene mutations that led to reductase deficiency and then methemoglobinemia.

The symptoms returned after 11 days, but a slightly higher dose of the methylene blue fixed the issue and now Fido (not his real name) gets that higher concentration every other day which keeps his methemoglobin concentration at bay.

Methemoglobinemia can affect different animals differently, and while the solution seems