Kris­tel Marie Ram­nath

In last week's ar­ti­cle we briefly looked at the leg­is­la­tion per­tain­ing to fire­works-man­u­fac­ture, im­por­ta­tion, sale and us­age-for Trinidad and To­ba­go. This week we fo­cus on the ef­fects to an­i­mals, man­age­ment and treat­ment.Over the past year, I have been com­pil­ing da­ta on the re­ac­tions of do­mes­tic dogs and cats to loud nois­es such as thun­der and fire­works. The re­sults of my sur­vey in­di­cate that of the 110 an­i­mals stud­ied, 55 per cent showed mod­er­ate fear to se­vere pho­bic be­hav­iour. Nights fraught with fire­works (such as Di­vali, In­de­pen­dence and New Year's Eve) have the high­est in­ci­dence of an­i­mals which run away from home in ter­ror, in­jure them­selves while try­ing to es­cape the dis­tress they feel, or suf­fer silent­ly while their own­ers drug them up.

Re­mem­ber that dogs and cats ex­pe­ri­ence the world through their sens­es: nose first, then ears, eyes, tongue and paws. Their sens­es of smell and sound de­tec­tion are far more at­tuned and sen­si­tive than ours, which is why they can de­tect cer­tain stim­uli quick­er than we can. If you have an an­i­mal who is scared of thun­der, ever no­ticed how its be­hav­iour changes with the weath­er? Bright blue skies and shin­ing sun yet he be­comes sub­dued, whim­pers and starts look­ing for a place to hide long be­fore we no­tice the dark cloud hov­er­ing on the hori­zon.

A py­rotech­nic dis­play is very dif­fer­ent to a thun­der­storm for an an­i­mal. A dog or cat can usu­al­ly pre­dict the ap­proach of a storm through changes in scent, elec­tri­cal charges and move­ment of the wind. The hand of God, al­so known as Moth­er Na­ture pro­vides these omens be­fore her fury is un­leashed, giv­ing the an­i­mals time to find shel­ter. Man sim­ply lights up on nights that suit his fan­cy with no pri­or warn­ing, leav­ing the an­i­mals un­pre­pared for sud­den booms, flash­ing lights and burnt aro­mas. In ad­di­tion, fire­works are usu­al­ly clos­er to the earth in prox­im­i­ty, ac­com­pa­nied by ar­ti­fi­cial squeals as they rise in­to the air, and are more vi­brant­ly coloured and repet­i­tive than a peal of thun­der or in­ter­mit­tent strike of light­ning.

The pol­i­cy state­ment of the British Small An­i­mal Vet­eri­nary As­so­ci­a­tion on the man­age­ment and treat­ment of fire­work pho­bias in dogs de­clares that, "it is the du­ty of vet­eri­nary sur­geons to rec­om­mend and sup­port ev­i­dence-based ther­a­pies for this noise fear or pho­bia in or­der that they may im­prove the wel­fare of an­i­mals un­der their care" and it is one of my New Year wish­es that the Trinidad & To­ba­go Vet­eri­nary As­so­ci­a­tion will fol­low this ex­am­ple. Most vet­eri­nar­i­ans in T&T sim­ply pre­scribe anx­i­olyt­ic or am­nesic drugs which may man­age the pho­bia tem­porar­i­ly, but do not treat the pho­bia.

The aim of us­ing short-term med­ica­tion is to re­duce the emo­tion­al im­pact of a fear­ful/pho­bic event with­out pro­duc­ing se­da­tion, atax­ia or hy­per-ex­citabil­i­ty that might make the an­i­mal more dif­fi­cult to man­age. The emo­tion­al im­pact of a fear­ful/pho­bic event may be re­duced ei­ther by re­duc­ing the dog's emo­tion­al re­sponse to that event, or by al­ter­ing its mem­o­ry of it. Giv­en that all short term med­ica­tions used for pho­bia man­age­ment are li­able to pro­duce ad­verse ef­fects, some of which might be high­ly un­de­sir­able or even dan­ger­ous dur­ing a pho­bic event, it is es­sen­tial that any drug used must be test­ed with an in­di­vid­ual pa­tient and the dose titrat­ed to ef­fect.

It is in­ad­vis­able to leave an­i­mals un­su­per­vised when they have been giv­en short-term tran­quil­lis­ers or anx­i­olyt­ic drugs, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing pho­bic events, and an­i­mals must not be left alone to­geth­er if one of them has been giv­en such a drug.Be­hav­iour­al ther­a­py us­ing de­sen­si­ti­sa­tion and counter-con­di­tion­ing in con­junc­tion with pheromones and calm, re­laxed own­er pres­ence are safer and more ef­fec­tive meth­ods of treat­ing fears and pho­bias in an­i­mals in the long-term.