Seperation Anxiety and meds

[michigank93]

I have a two year old Belgian malinios that has some significant separation anxiety issues. When kenneled, the dog spins and spins to the point that it creates front leg/shoulder pain the following day. Other times the spinning has caused a spot to rub off on its hind quarter and bleeding has taken place. I am considering some separation anxiety meds, such as clomicalm, to help in retraining but am wondering if anyone has previous experience with this med and if it effects a dogs performance. The malinois is an explosive detection/tracking dog.

[Eurodog]

I have a two year old Belgian malinios that has some significant separation anxiety issues. When kenneled, the dog spins and spins to the point that it creates front leg/shoulder pain the following day. Other times the spinning has caused a spot to rub off on its hind quarter and bleeding has taken place. I am considering some separation anxiety meds, such as clomicalm, to help in retraining but am wondering if anyone has previous experience with this med and if it effects a dogs performance. The malinois is an explosive detection/tracking dog.

All as I can say is that Meds are the road to DOOM! To be fair we would have to know a bit more about the situation, diagosing a problem without seeing the dog is near impossible........

If it's not prying how come you have a cross trained Explosive Detection Dog with Tracking? If your dog is that hyper you might question his suitability for the job he's doing................

[OCanada]

That is a difficult one. I am guessing that your dog has been seen by a vet? Do you exercise him well before kenneling, to make him calm and tired?

I did work with a handler who had a similar thing going on a number of years ago. His Mal would do the same at home and at work, the spinning and never relaxing. The only thing that helped was a lot of exercise. So the handler adjusted his exercise around running the dog before kenneling.