They’re our best friends and our caretakers, always sensing our moods and often bringing us back into a better state. Intuitive, intelligent and insightful, our dogs know us better than anyone.  I think we can agree that they keep us grounded and sane.  While we deal with the stresses of our lives, our dogs seem grounded to the better things in our world.

So why are we drugging them? Why are we making our dogs into zombies? Maladies that can easily be treated with Chinese or Western herbs, homeopathic remedies and natural nutraceuticals are being treated with pharmaceutical drugs … and dog owners are not being taught that there are better ways to handle these problems, without the risks that come with the medications.

One of those risky drugs is trazodone. 

What Is Trazodone?

Trazodone, one of the newest and latest drugs pharmaceutical industries are plugging for our pets, is also known by the brand names Desyrel and Oleptro. 

Trazodone is a medication to manage and treat major depressive disorders in people. It’s a serotonin antagonist/reuptake inhibitor (SARI) antidepressant. In dogs it’s used to treat behavioral disorders, especially anxiety- or phobia-related problems (eg, separation anxiety, noise phobia like fireworks or thunderstorms, veterinary visits, hospitalizations, etc.

Pharmaceutical companies don’t know exactly how trazodone works for the various problems it is prescribed for, but they do know that it messes with the patient’s serotonin levels. I’ll talk more about serotonin in a bit. 

Off-Label Prescribing

Trazodone isn’t specifically approved for use in dogs. But pharmaceutical companies are coming up with drugs that they find to be perhaps helpful for one problem, and then promoting every off-label use to raise their bottom line. 

These companies often have no idea of how these drugs cause the particular off-label effect, but this delineation allows them to market drugs for a plethora of additional problems. 

During the pandemic, CE (Continuing Education) classes were online instead of in person. When I attended, every single speaker worked for a pharmaceutical company. They announced their conflicts of interest right off the bat (followed by some pictures of their pet llama to create a more likable profile) … and then went on to give lectures which all ended up with the same moral to the story:

“Purchase this product and use it all year round and all the time.” 

It just happened to be a product that the company that paid them sold. Veterinarians want to be up on the new things, so they rush and prescribe these products, often with no questions asked. 

But trazodone has a long list of known side effects, some of them serious.

Side Effects Of Trazodone

Some of the most common side effects of trazodone are: 

• Headache
• Fatigue
• Dizziness
• Drowsiness
• Depression
• Ataxia
• Low or high blood pressure
• Brachycardia or tachycardia (slow or fast heart rate)
• Disorientation
• Hyperesthesia (increased sensitivity to sight, sound, touch or smell)
• Urinary incontinence
• Apnea
• Seizures or tremors

The drug should not be used in patients with liver or kidney impairment.

In some cases, trazodone has caused visual hallucinations in human patients. How about dogs? Can they tell us that they have a headache or that they’re dizzy or that they have suicidal thoughts? I guess we would never know if dogs began hallucinating or felt suicidal.

But one thing that’s clear is that trazodone affects serotonin … and that’s a problem, because we don’t really know how.

What Serotonin Does

 

Serotonin is one of the most important neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters are chemicals used by brain cells to communicate with each other. Serotonin is important in the central nervous system and the gastrointestinal tract. It’s said to promote feelings of happiness, relaxation, emotional balance, and overall wellbeing. 

But how does it do that? 

It turns out, we don’t really know. According to the NCBI (National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health) in 2022,

“The full spectrum of trazodone’s mechanism of action is not fully understood, explaining its off label uses. Trazodone reduces levels of neurotransmitters such as serotonin, noradrenalin, dopamine, acetylcholines, and histamine. Trazodone is an anti-depressant that works by inhibiting both serotonin transporter and serotonin type two receptors.“

So, this description suggests trazodone reduces serotonin. Is it safe to interfere with serotonin when we don’t really know how the drug works? One example of a potential problem is the fact that inhibiting serotonin can suppress some basic instinctive behaviors … 

A group of researchers at Case Western Reserve University found that serotonin-deficient mother mice failed to nurse their young, did not build nests for them and did not organize them to huddle (necessary for warmth).  All the baby mice died. If they were moved in with a mouse that was not serotonin-deficient, the baby mice were well cared for and survived.

In my opinion, our dogs care for us and watch over us. What happens to them when we give them drugs that deny them the joy they have in doing this task?

Drug Risks

A living body, whether animal or human, is a perfectly balanced machine that has communication pathways that interconnect in a most complex and sophisticated manner. When we use drugs on our dogs without knowing exactly how they work and what they do, we are, in essence, dropping a hand grenade into the works. And yet, very often, we’re all too willing to do just that.

We hope that our dog won’t be as nervous at her vet visit. The veterinarian thinks it will be easier for him to handle her. Yet, when I had a very busy practice for decades, I never took the pet away from her owner and out of the exam room for something like a blood draw. It was the very rare dog that couldn’t be calmed and soothed and handled by my staff.

PRO TIP
One technique I used to calm dogs was yawning. Yawning is dog language for “Relax, everything is okay.” When a doggy patient was nervous in my practice I would yawn and yawn as I listened to their owners tell me why they were there. More than once, a client would say, “Am I boring you?” I’d explain I was using doggy language to tell them it was safe and fine. And it usually worked! No need for drugs.[JH1] 

I for one won’t prescribe trazodone to my patients.  As a holistic veterinarian, there are countless ways to manage dog anxiety safely without resorting to drugs whose actions we don’t understand.