people drugs = people problems

i thought an update on the budnik might be in order…

…while the weather definitely seems to be effecting him a bit, i believe the biggest problem we were having in his decline was pills. see, when we switched him from the shot to the pills i was supposed to get one kind, but they gave me two, saying they played nicely together.

the problem is, as much as i love him, budnik can’t speak english. damn, would life be easier if he did, but he doesn’t. so, a whimper and whine combo can mean many things. it can mean he’s in pain, or hungry, or frustrated. we thought it was the first one, but now i’m leaning towards the last. the problem is, when we thought it was the first, we (with the vet’s blessing) upped the dosage on that second medication. the pill in question is gabapentin, which is actually an anticonvulsant for people that is used for pain and anxiety in dogs, albeit off the books (i.e. it’s not approved for that purpose, but it’s done – i should quickly add we weren’t informed of that part). while it made life a little peaceful, it made him have more and more issues that most people chalked up to “old age”.

i wasn’t so sure, so i did a little research and found a page listing side effect issues with this, and it turns out “ataxia” was a big problem, and is a veterinary term for when the back legs become weakened to the point of the dog not being able to get up, stand for too long, all the issues we were having. leave it to the people drugs to have all the side effects, right? i mean, we are the only species where when pharmaceutical ads are run more than half the time is spent listing side effects and shit. when i brought this up to the vet, he suggested a slow two week taper off to see where it took us, so we started that day. within hours budnik got himself up and walked over to me, with the hobbling hopping walk that’s become his new normal due to laying on a shoulder to the point of (possibly) killing it’s usefulness.

i saw this as a good sign.

we’ve had various flashes of this as we dwindled down from three pills (one every eight hours) to two (one every twelve hours) and now to one, but, due to it being people meds, we started to turn our attention from the “side effects” to the “WITHDRAW effects” (heart palpitations, anxiety, body aches, all that wonderful junkie cleaning up shit) and so i’m leaning towards nixing this completely for dog cbd and calling it done.

the one thing both the websites AND our vet agree on is thou shalt not combine cbd with gabapentin (it basically knocks your dog out for a day at a time) so i’ve got to know how long we need to have it out of his system before switching that in, as this is being written on day two of seven of the final phase out, but you’re reading it on day six of seven. i’ve already got the cbd, and it’s in drop form and salmon flavor. we just need to know when to say when.