I posted some time ago asking about this drug for a horse I bought in January. I talked with my vet and she in turn discussed my ADHD/spooky/reactive type horse with a DVM animal behaviorist. She thought it would be worth a try. I was to give him 60 mg/day the first week, increase by 60 mg/day each week until he was at a full dose of 240 mg/day (4 weeks to build him up to the full dose). BTW, I had already treated him for ulcers and had the vet check him for things like pain or poor eyesight. He checked out fine. Ulcer med didn’t change anything either. I used several calming supplements with no improvement.
He was up to 120 mg/day of fluoxetine and I could tell a difference. He was less distractable, better able to think when he got scared, more engaging with me–less “out there.” When I upped him to 180 mg/day, he started getting pushy and even a little semi-aggressive, behavior he had never shown before. I figured it was side effects, and I decided to wean him off it entirely.
After slowly weaning him, the pushy stuff went away, but the distractibility, spookiness, and ADHD stuff reared its ugly head again full force. He would also look through me and around me, rather than engage with me as most horses do. It was like he was so preoccupied with what was going on in his environment (waiting for the next bomb to drop) that he didn’t have any room to fit me into it.
I decided to put him back on the drug again, this time stop increasing the dose when he was at 120 mg/day, which had been a good dose for him before. Slowly the weird stuff improved. Don’t think he is perfect–he really is far from being a “normal” horse, but it sure is nice to have a horse that actually thinks better and isn’t as much of a space cadet as he was.
I plan to keep him on 120 mg/day for another month or so, and then I’ll VERY slowly increase it to see if I can get him up to the full dose and see what additional benefit he can get from it. My vet and I have discussed increasing 20 mg/day each week or two depending on his response to it.
He doesn’t act drugged at all. It’s just removed some of his anxiety. He used to get scared and freaked out about something and not be able to calm down. On the drug, he still gets scared or worried … but he seems to be able to come down from the fear more quickly, or never even get as worked up in the first place.
I have never given a horse an actual drug for anxiety. It’s been difficult for me to do. But this horse is really nice except for the anxiety. Unfortunately, I don’t know much about his past. I suspect he’s been passed around a lot in his short 7 years, and has a lot of mental/emotional scars from this. He’s a naturally sensitive horse. He needs stability. But, I also need stability and a safe horse. I want to give him a chance because he’s really a nice horse, and also because I don’t want to pass him on to someone else who may not be as tolerant of his issues as I am and then the cycle will continue, or he will end up at the slaughter house.
I don’t take giving him a drug lightly. It was a tough decision. And, I probably wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t have a well-respected animal behaviorist vet guiding me through the process via my primary vet. But, the way I look at it is that it must be very hard for him to live with the level of anxiety he has, if the drug helps ease that while he gains some confidence and learns the world isn’t going to get him, it’s worth it.
.
