02/06/2025
"You'd Rather Put Dogs In Chemical Shutdown Than Train Them".
This is such a common throwaway comment at the moment. One that needs examination.
When I first started this work I was anti meds. I used to very naively believe it was just another way of controlling a dog/restraining them.
Boy has my opinion changed over the last few years.
There's a few cases on my books at the moment that 100% NEED the medication they're on. 100%. It wasn't a "this will make it easier". It wasn't a "this will mean we need to do less training". It wasn't a "do this then your problem will be fixed".
It was a "for your dog to respond to any/more behaviour modification we need to give them a little help in managing how much overwhelm they are feeling".
And it was a tough decision, not taken lightly.
I ALWAYS want to give the dog a chance to battle through their struggles without being medicated first and foremost.
I think back to my history and how my GP put me on medication immediately as a young teenager. Without any forewarning about any difficulties it can present with. Without any hesitancy and offering any other type of help first. I presented with (albeit severe) anxiety and the medication was the answer for him. The whole answer.
I don't want to be *that* practitioner.
Medication isn't the answer. Mainly because medication isn't about chemical shut down. That isn't the type of meds we reach for. Anyone who perpetuates that myth just isn't taking the time to really see how some dogs genuinely need some extra input in order to ease their struggles.
It's about EXTRA INPUT. It isn't a chemical restraint. In fact it isn't a restraint at all.
One case I'm referring to- after months of behaviour modification where the dog was responding WELL, the next stage was feeling like too big a jump from where we were. Unfortunately real life isn't organised in a way dogs need it to be. This dog was still far too overwhelmed with some basic real life experiences we had to consider meds to help him bridge the gap between what he can now do, and what we need to expose him to next. The result has been absolutely monumental. This dog is now coping with things we literally could only ever dream of. He's not shut down, not by any stretch. But the gap between stimulus and response for this dog has grown so substantially that some old triggers (like change) have seemingly melted away. His ability to think instead of just feel has been a marked change. He's able to participate in behaviour modification and training in ways he couldn't before.
Another case - until you've seen genuine hyperkinesis you won't really appreciate what you are looking for. It became clear right from very early doors that JUST behaviour modification wasn't going to touch this dog. In fact, it had been tried. Aversives had been tried. As had positive reinforcement methods. Nothing worked. Thankfully the family knew just using increasingly severe aversives was a slippery slope to misery. We've been working together with a vet on a genuine diagnosis and progress is still being monitored. Part of the diagnosis was giving sedatives. It worsened the behaviour (a hallmark of hyperkinesis). Nothing about this case is trying to achieve chemical shut down. It's about trying to genuinely help the dog with an actual chemical problem.
Another case - extreme fear of a genetic origin AS WELL AS life history. Fear based behaviour mod is not about shutting a dog down. It's the opposite. It's about lifting them up. It's about giving them more of a chance to be able to even process the world around them without immediately panicking. We know you can't train a dog out of genuine fear. The goal isn't shutting them down so they can tolerate the world better. It's about building them up so they can ENGAGE with the world better.
None of these cases have been about putting them on medication and hey presto, sedated/shut down dog there for you to work with. None of these dogs are being treated with sedatives.
Medication can make a MASSIVE difference in some really severe/complex/rare cases. It's really naive to think you can spend years and years and years working with these marvellous creatures and you'd never come across a dog whose brain chemistry just isn't as it should be. Think of the number of dogs with physical disabilities. Deafness, blindness, epilepsy, structural issues. These things happen and the brain is also susceptible to things being a little bit topsy turvy making life more difficult to cope with.
Medication isn't going to fix anything. But it can make the dog a LOT more open to thinking/feeling a bit differently. That's where behaviour modification comes in.
I wish, for our dogs' sake, we'd stop just blindly sharing these myths without fact checking them. It simply isn't true that we look to meds to achieve chemical shut down. Meds CAN BE part of the work in many ways. But NONE of those ways are about sedating a dog so they stop behaving in a way we don't want them to.
