Behavior-altering drugs can help dogs with phobias or anxiety disorders – but you have to learn which ones work best in each case.

By Mary Straus

Ten years ago, my dog Piglet woke me in the middle of the night, trembling violently and utterly terrified. It took me hours to track the source of her panic to a barely audible high-pitched beep that sounded once every two minutes, coming from a smoke alarm’s low battery indicator.

Piglet, a Chinese Shar-Pei owned by author Mary Straus, is a normally confident dog. Over the years, however, she has become more and more noise-phobic, to the point of requiring drug therapy to quell her fears enough to enjoy a normal life.

Thus began Piglet’s long history of noise phobias. Below is the story of my struggle to help her cope with these phobias and, eventually, generalized anxiety disorder. While I would urge anyone dealing with anxiety issues to first try natural methods of treatment, it is important to know there are medications that can offer your dog quality of…

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