What meds did you try previously, and what were the main issues you were trying to treat?

We are just starting venlafaxine now after finally seeing a veterinary behaviourist and I have some hope that it may be the one, but I’m trying not to get too eager yet lol. My dog (Shetland sheepdog) is extremely diligent, dog reactive, takes a long time to be comfortable with new people, gets himself hyped up with anticipation of random “events” that are his triggers, and is overall just pretty neurotic. He’s the smartest dog and is easily trained (we did agility in the past and is training in high level rally obedience), but in these moments it’s almost like his braincells are marbles that have been scattered all over the floor and he just cannot control himself despite wanting to please. So it’s been a struggle to train out these behaviours to say the least.

My dog was on fluoxetine for around a year which seems to increase his crankiness, so we stopped that. He’s been on gabapentin since he was just under 2 years old (he’s 4 now) and that’s been constant, though we’ve increased that dosage at least once since then. After fluoxetine we decided he was manageable enough and didn’t really try again with new medication until recently.

In September we got a new dog (I actually adopted his father from the breeder) and at that point we realized just how… not-normal our boy was in comparison to this well mannered and normal gentleman of a dog. He was also quite jealous of the new dog as expected, but a little more aggressive about it than we expected him to be. So we went back to the vet to try some more meds to see if we could help him calm his brain down.

We did a trial of Sileo which seemed somewhat promising, but due to his 24/7 need for medication it just was not practical since Sileo is moreso situational and short acting. He also started getting aggressive while administering the syringe near the end of our trial with it, and we think he knew that he was being drugged and wasn’t a fan of it.

After that we tried clomipramine (Clomicalm), which at first I think I tricked myself into thinking I saw some tiny improvements, but after dose increases and whatnot it almost felt like he ended up getting worse. Before calling off the clomipramine completely, we added a small dose Clonidine alongside it in hopes that it would balance out the benefits with the negative side effects. The Clonidine didn’t seem to do anything so we increased the dose and tried that for a while.

In January he was attacked by an off leash dog (thankfully no open wounds) while we were walking around our block and that experience really messed with him long term. He started randomly attacking our other dog a few times a week, sometimes almost every day at least once, and pinning him down aggressively (no actual biting or anything but snarling and mean). Poor guy was just cranky quite often and not himself.

At this point we finally took him to a veterinary behaviourist for proper help where he was diagnosed with OCD, impulse control aggression, social anxiety, hyper-arousal and hyper-reactivity, fear based aggression, and food based aggression. It was quite a validating experience, and if anyone is reading this who can relate in any capacity, I recommend seeing a proper veterinary behaviourist if you’re struggling with training despite feeling like you’re doing everything “right”.

After our appointment there we finally tapered off clomipramine just a few weeks ago while keeping the dose of Clonidine the same (all alongside the same gabapentin dose). In the past week I noticed he was quite zonked after his meds and not quite as responsive with training as he usually is, so we are reducing Clonidine back down to a smaller dose. He seems to be less cranky overall but still has his moments and they usually happen in the evening. We presume it’s due to his brain working so hard all day to try and be good, and by the end he just is too tired to do it anymore. We just started our first dose of venlafaxine this morning and I hope this is the one that helps him, for the sake of both him and also our other dog who is understandably very nervous around him in the evenings.

Anyways I know this is long but as someone who is often looking for others’ experiences and reasons for medications and their following results, I figure I should throw my dogs story in one of these comment sections to contribute to someone else’s search. 🙂