Diary #835

I’m pleased to report that Axel is completely off of the trazodone which the shelter had him on. When I first got him at the end of November, he was on 400mg/day, an immense dose for a 20kg animal. So I immediately started weaning him off, at first reducing the dose by 50mg/day every week, then once we were down to 100mg/day slowing the reduction to 25mg/day every few weeks. At the end of April he was down to 25mg/day, then for all of May 12.5mg/day, and then at the beginning of June I started skipping days between doses; since I saw no difference in his behavior between med days and no-med days, his last dose was a week ago, Monday the 22nd, and he’s just fine. He no longer chases the cats or snaps at strangers, and he isn’t nearly as high-strung as he was just a few months ago; about the only relics of his former problems are a tendency to eat cat shit (I know it isn’t an unusual dog behavior, but I’ve never owned a dog that did it before) and some separation anxiety. He no longer…