As you can clearly see in the photo below, Maggie is very excited about her 12th Birthday 🎂…she’s 91 according to her DNS predicted genetic age. 😳 (larger breed dogs age faster than smaller dogs)
The great news is Maggie seems to be doing better both physically and mentally this year than last year. A new veterinarian has brought changes providing relief from arthritis (we didn’t even know she had) and hopefully better management of her fears and anxiety.
On arthritis, the new vet looked at how she was standing (a slightly tight stance with her paws in under her centerline) and then said, “You know she’s got arthritis, right?” Duh, we didn’t know. Sure she’d gotten slower getting around but she’s 12 and there were never outward signs of pain. He recommended giving Maggie a daily joint health supplement for dogs, Dasuquin. The first month was to be a double dose and after that a single dose for maintenance. After only three days of the double dose, we could see the difference in Maggie. Her standing stance was wider, she was popping up from the floor to a standing position, and the bouncy jogging trot was back when we walked. She’s more mobile than she’s been in a couple of years and with that, she seems to be calmer…so maybe she was in pain. I feel bad we didn’t identify this sooner.
On anxiety, for several years Maggie has been on a daily Xanax prescription to deal with rather severe noise phobia and related anxieties. The latest information indicates Xanax works on dogs primarily as a sedative but doesn’t address the root anxieties. So we’re in the process of getting Maggie off Xanax with, if we feel it’s required, a move to another human-grade antidepressant, Trazodone. Trazodone doesn’t have the strong sedative properties of Xanax and has shown success in altering brain chemicals providing some real root-cause relief of canine anxieties. Stopping Xanax is a process and shouldn’t be stopped cold-turkey. So over a period of several weeks I’ve been slowly reducing her dosage and when she’s totally off Xanax we’ll evaluate if and how much Trazodone might be required.
To assist in managing this transition, we’re using the behavioral health supplement, Solliquin. Solliquin is made by the same company, Nutramax, that makes Desuquin. So far our results with Solliquin has been very positive.
Sorry if I bored you with the details above but I thought someone might be having similar issues and could happen upon this post in a Internet search. It’ll be tagged as such for searching.
The bottom line is Maggie is doing well, all 87lbs of her. 😲 A side effect of Xanax is increased appetite so I suspect she’s going to lose some weight once she’s off it.
It’s hard to believe that 11 years and 5 months ago we added this terribly shy, awkward, gangly, all legs, energy bundle to our lives.
It’s been an 11+ year ride with many personal changes, hard decisions and a multitude of learning experiences. Now Bonnie would say most of the change and learning has been on my part…she’s probably right. Dogs give much more than they take.
Wishing a very happy birthday to Maggie and many many more.
Thanks for sharing what you have been doing for her anxiety. We have been dealing with a bit with Cosmo. He has a lot of separation anxiety and freaks out going for car rides.
Our vet gave us Trazadone, which we have used a few times when we knew we were going to be out for a few hours. Had to reduce it to 1/2 pill because a whole really doped him up. We have tried some of the natural “calming” treats which seem to have no effect as well as CBD oil. I may have to give this Solloquin a try.
Car rides are the biggest thing we need to overcome at the moment because it is hard to take him anywhere, even a 5 minute ride to the park.
Thanks, Mark. Luckily Maggie doesn’t seem to suffer from separation anxiety but she does get anxious in the car unless she can have the car window partly down so she can stick her head our…not so comfortable in the winter or when it’s raining…one of the very reasons for our ending RV’ing.
We haven’t gotten to the Trazadone stage yet. Today is the first day for Maggie being completely off Xanax…we’ll see how that goes. I didn’t realize Trazadone could/would “dope” them up…not especially good news! Oh well, perhaps Maggie will react differently.
Prior to this, we’ve also tried CBD Oil and a bunch of other natural treatments, all with little success. It’s not been a cure-all, but for Maggie, Solloquin does provide some relief.
Good luck on finding a working solution with Cosmo. Keep us informed and you guys stay well!
Mark, did you receive a “new comment” email notification? Just wanting to confirm those are working now.
Yes! I did get the emails. All seems to be working again. (This kind of stuff can be kind of annoying to figure out if someone doesn’t tell you)
Email notifications definitely help me keep up with blog conversations, so thanks for having that feature enabled.
Yeah, so far we have only used Trazadone sporadically – but it is effective to a degree. He has still destroyed things while on it, but to a lesser extent. It seems kind of a funny reference … varying degrees of destruction! We have not come up with a solution yet on car rides. Fortunately, the latest state of the world and our own health issues have us staying at home.
We suspect some type of serious trauma before we adopted him. Due to an occasional limp, we had him x-rayed and found he is missing a complete hip joint due to some past serious injury where he must have had surgery to remove the ball head from his femur, and as such is about 2 inches shorter than the other back leg. Now it has us wondering if he was either hit by a car, or in a serious car accident, leading to his car anxiety. He still runs like a bullet though!
Haha, Hand Grenade vs. Nuclear Bomb…varying degrees of destruction but deadly in either case if you’re too close. Wow…it sounds like whatever happened to Cosmo must have been major and it would seem someone at some point made a decision to operate and save him. There’s a story there if he could only talk. I’m happy Cosmo has a good family now.
Thanks again for the heads up on the new comments notifications…I like that feature too and am happy it’s once again working.
Just stopped by to wish Maggie a happy birthday. Haven’t owned a dog in years but always happy to hear about those of others. I hope the new medication works a treat.
All the best to you guys.
P.S. looking forward to the comment notifications. I wasn’t getting any wither but always forgot to mention it :)
Hi Cedric, thanks for the happy birthday wishes. Maggie had a good day. But you know us dog owners, we can be pretty emotionally sloppy over our pets. They quickly become like one of our kids, except they never ask for money. :-) We’re conservatively hopeful about the new medication. This week may tell the tale.
Hopefully, those comments notification will work correctly for you now. I agree, it is a very useful feature and I hate it was offline so long.
Be safe and healthy my friend!
Happy birthday, Maggie! She has been a major part of this blog. I can sure relate to the noise phobia. Probably the main reason I head to the country every so often. I didn’t know you were a pharmacist.
Yes, Maggie is certainly a major part of our everyday life so it’s no wonder she’s often mentioned or featured in this blog. A noise phobia could mean a number of things these days…sound or course, or even perhaps the daily bombardment of our lives by all the news and social media crap/noise. Some days I definitely have that second type. Thanks for your comment, Monte. Stay safe and healthy! (my new tag line) haha