Comfortably Numb

Given that Violet needed to remain pretty calm and still for a couple months to let the knee heal, the doctors recommended keeping her on a sedative. A pharmaceutical study at State offered to give her Trazodone or a placebo for the first month, and known Trazodone for the second month, and pay $100 toward my follow-up x-rays.

Sold.

I got her home, and the study drug didn’t seem to be doing much. Once she came off her pain meds, she was rarin’ and ready to go. I was convinced I had gotten the placebo.

After two weeks of giving her those little white pills and filling out surveys, I was freaking out. She kept trying to play, and I kept not letting her. She would cry and throw herself against the door when I left the house with Redford. We were both miserable.

Finally, when she goaded Redford into wrestling with her while my back was turned and he stepped on her and made her yelp something awful, I emailed the vet student and study administrator I had met with and told them the story. They shipped me known Trazodone right away and, when even it didn’t seem to be doing much, we upped her dose several times. Still, the moment I’d let her out to go potty, she would sprint across to the deck and out to the tree to check it for squirrels.

On Tuesday, at Redford’s appointment, my vet said I could give Violet regular old Benadryl, for a cheap option. I went out and bought a $15 bottle of it. Two hundred capsules.

He said the dose was 1 milligram per kilo of dog (25 mg), but that I may want to start with a half-capsule. No, thank you. I wasn’t taking chances. I gave her a full capsule. On 25 mg, she chewed the heel of one of my new Danskos. On 37.5, she ate the bottom of the spare bedroom’s door.

Maybe the Trazodone was working somewhat after all.

Anybody own a tranquilizer dart gun?