Pill-popping pets and their nutbar owners

For the denizens of Western civilization with way too much time, way, way too much money, and not enough sharp-thinking personal psychology on their hands, Big Pharma offers pet antidepressants.

But, it’s big bucks. Pfizer alone grosses a cool $1 bil a year off prescribing for pets.

Beyond SSRI or tricyclic antidepressants?

Xanax for dogs. Great, a generation of canine addicts.

Worse than this, though, is animal counseling.

For starters –
Dogs do NOT have childhoods.

Throwing Fido a doggy Prozac is bad enough; trying to do pet cognitive therapy, especially when the “patient” can’t talk back, is …

PSEUDOSCIENCE.

Veterinarian Ian Dunbar gets it right:

Modern owners are increasingly trying to “sterilize” pet ownership, he adds, trying to pharmacologically control dogs so that they don’t act like dogs. “What people want is a pet that is on par with a TiVo, that its activity, play and affection are on demand,” he says “Then, when they’re done, they want to turn it off.”