Do Dogs Suffer Depression?

[Lonegun1894]

I'll take a dog over most people any day. My ex learned this when she told me to choose her or my dog. The dog is still here.

[jcwit]

That's if you think its just a human trait to begin with. Personaly I think its us humans that come up short in showing love, trust, and feelings when stacked up next to a dog.

Exactly, people have lost touch with a large portion of the world, both the seen and the unseen.

I do believe the Native American still holds onto some of it tho, the rest of us, not so much!

[Ballistics in Scotland]

They can be depressed when there is a reason for it, but they don't get clinical depression, the kind which really worries doctors, and which consists of depression without a reason. If you show depressive symptoms and the doctor learns that you have some kind of depression or irresolvable problem in your life, it is a tremendously healthy sign. Maybe depression with cause was a benign condition in our caveman days, stopping us from going out and falling an easy prey to the sabre-tooth, or pushing off in our canoe without a paddle.

When our old Labrador died, our cairn terrier, although apparently an unsentimental little hoodlum, went into decline. Or rather the reverse. She would take no exercise at all, and got so fat she was concave across the back. When carried to the nearby park she wouldn't move unless a big light brown dog was seen. She would run to it so fast I was afraid something would happen, only to relapse into gloom when she realized it was a stranger.

That dog would have been dead in weeks. So as I was at university I bought a puppy described as a mongrel terrier for thirty shillings in a Glasgow petshop. It seemed to have made matters worse, for the cairn was passionately jealous. A good dog will never bite a puppy, but she wouldn't stay in the room for three weeks. Then that little black nose pushed the door open. and they started wrestling away like two puppies. The cairn's weight fell away, and they kept it up until the puppy, which had turned into a curiously foxy and silky collie, was too big. Not that she was ever too big to be bullied, though.

She looked like a German shepherd/ Shetland collie cross, but I've seen them breeding more or less true like that in the back streets of Glasgow. If it was the Third World - and parts of Glasgow are close - someone would have registered them as a rare breed by now. I've had shepherds tell me she was a phenomenon even by border collie standards - "Laddie, it's pure sin for a collie like that tae be raised an amateur". But she was a pure pacifist, who caught up with rabbits but lost interest on finding out they don't want to play with dogs. The little cairn bounced up and down in horrow, and wouldn't walk within six feet of her all the way home. Both of them lived in good health to the age of fifteen, and I never carried a lead in the nine or so we had the collie alone.

[Clay M]

Prozac is labeled for dogs, and bears in zoos.
I know because my wife is a veterinarian.

My old fifteen year old cat used to get frantically sad when we would go off for the weekend. He would cry for an hour when we would return home.
I got two new cats to keep him company ,and he is always calm when we come back home.

[trapper9260]

The 2 coydogs I had and they where brothers and one came down with lung cancer and was just short of 12 years old I had to put him down his brother could not eat hardly and then over eat later and when ever I would take him for a ride he was thinking we where going to get his brother. Then the next year, I got another one that was a puppy and he stay away from it the first night and then the next day he put the puppy in his place now one is need to be around the other. the first one is now over 14 1/2 years old and then was puppy is over 2 years old . Got him when he was 8 weeks , the brothers was the vet said was about 6 1/2 weeks old at the time.Reason do not know there age was because i got them from the wild and one got caught in my coyote trap.

[GhostHawk]

I am pretty sure that dogs can experience grief. We have all heard story's of the old man who passed away and his faithful dog lays on his grave. He knows that is where his master went. He probably also knows that his master is dead.

Dogs are pack animals, it would be normal to lose pack mates. Be still and quiet for a time dealing with it.
And it would look like depression.

I am not sure they experience depression as we do, being down, depressed, lethargic for no real reason other than we feel that way.

I think with dogs it is all situational, and with time and love it may go away, and it may not.

I also agree with Lloyd that it is us humans who almost never match up to the unconditional love, trust, and acceptance shown in almost every dog. If we loved more, and better, like dogs. Not for what we get out of it, but for love's sake. Well the world would be a better place.

[jcwit]

I am pretty sure that dogs can experience grief. We have all heard story's of the old man who passed away and his faithful dog lays on his grave. He knows that is where his master went. He probably also knows that his master is dead.

Dogs are pack animals, it would be normal to lose pack mates. Be still and quiet for a time dealing with it.
And it would look like depression.

I am not sure they experience depression as we do, being down, depressed, lethargic for no real reason other than we feel that way.

I think with dogs it is all situational, and with time and love it may go away, and it may not.

I also agree with Lloyd that it is us humans who almost never match up to the unconditional love, trust, and acceptance shown in almost every dog. If we loved more, and better, like dogs. Not for what we get out of it, but for love's sake. Well the world would be a better place.

Without a doubt that it would!

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Prozac is labeled for dogs, and bears in zoos.
I know because my wife is a veterinarian.

My old fifteen year old cat used to get frantically sad when we would go off for the weekend. He would cry for an hour when we would return home.
I got two new cats to keep him company ,and he is always calm when we come back home.

Some zoos are pretty enlightened nowadays, but can never quite reproduce the wild, and in the past the conditions would send just about any large animal around the bend. The petshop where I had bought my collie in 1968 was called Wilsons the Zoologist, and by that time had about mutated from an animal dealer and archaic indoor menagerie. In the 1950s, as a child, I saw a bear, Himalayan I think, which was actually rocking, and a black panther which incessantly paced up and down in its small, bare cage with tail swishing. A lot of zoo animals aren't half as dangerous as people imagine. There is nothing in it for them, and they see people all day. But I was learned in the classics, and even with my age in single figures I wouldn't have put my hand within range of those bars.

http://www.sheerpoetry.co.uk/junior/...ion-and-albert

[Goatwhiskers]

Just remember, God gave us dogs to teach us the meaning of unconditional love. GW

[jcwit]

Off topic, but wondering why the title of this thread got changed to "Y"?

[No_1]

Off topic, but wondering why the title of this thread got changed to "Y"?

Things happen - title fixed.

Robert

[Driver man]

The Lion and Albert

by Marriot Edgar

THE LION AND ALBERT

There’s a famous seaside place called Blackpool,
That’s noted for fresh air and fun,
And Mr and Mrs Ramsbottom
Went there with young Albert, their son.
A grand little lad was young Albert,
All dressed in his best; quite a swell
With a stick with an ‘orse’s ‘ead ‘andle,
The finest that Woolworth’s could sell.
They didn’t think much to the Ocean:
The waves, they was fiddlin’ and small,
There was no wrecks and nobody drownded,
Fact, nothing to laugh at at all.
So, seeking for further amusement,
they paid and went into the Zoo,
Where they’d Lions and Tigers and Camels,
And old ale and sandwiches too.
There were one great big Lion called Wallace;
His nose were all covered with scars-
He lay in a somnolent posture,
With the side of his face on the bars.
Now Albert had heard about Lions,
How they was ferocious and wild-
To see Wallace lying so peaceful,
Well, it didn’t seem right to the child.
So straightway the brave little feller,
Not showing a morsel of fear,
Took his stick with it’s’orse’s ‘ead ‘andle
...And pushed it in Wallace’s ear.
You could see that the Liion didn’t like it,
For giving a kind of a roll,
He pulled Albert inside the cage with ‘im,
And swallowed the little lad ‘ole.
Then Pa, who had seen the occurence,
And didn’t know what to do next,
Said “Mother! Yon Lion’s ‘et Albert”,
And Mother said, ‘Well I am vexed!”
Then Mr and Mrs Ramsbottom-
Quite rightly, when all’s said and done-
Complained to the Animal Keeper,
That the Lion had eaten their son.
The keeper was quite nice about it;
He said “What a nasty mishap.
Are you sure that it’s your boy he’s eaten?”
Pa said “Am I sure? There’s his cap!”
The manager had to be sent for.
He came and he said “What’s to do?”
Pa said “Yon Lion’s ‘et Albert,
And ‘im in his Sunday clothes, too.”
The Mother said, “Right’s right, young feller;
I think it’s a shame and a sin,
For a lion to go and eat Albert,
And after we’ve paid to come in.”
The manager wanted no trouble,
He took out his purse right away,
Saying “How much to settle the matter?”
And Pa said “What do you usually pay?”
But Mother had turned a bit awkward
When she thought where her Albert had gone.
She said “No! someone’s got to be summonsed”-
So that was decided upon.
Then off they went to the P’lice Station,
In front of the Magistrate chap;
They told ‘im what happened to Albert,
And proved it by showing his cap.
The Magistrate gave his opinion
That no one was really to blame
And he said that he hoped the Ramsbottoms
Would have further sons to their name.
At that Mother got proper blazing,
“And thank you, sir, kindly,” said she.
“What waste all our lives raising children
To feed ruddy Lions? Not me!”
MARRIOTT EDGAR

[kmw1954]

Thank you Robert for the fix! Any idea what causes this?

[KCSO]

I saw a gal last week fluffing up and kissing her little pootsie wootsie and I am SURE there is one depressed dog! It use to depress me when my aunts did it!

[kmw1954]

Well the puppies didn't work out. Diesel didn't want anything to do with them. We think they were too small or he thought they were chew toys. Rabbits are not safe inside his fence. He did fine amongst all the adult dogs that were present.

[BCRider]

I've never had multiple pets. But I know lots of families that do. Dogs very much feel confused and at a loss when a family member, human or animal, fail to come home. They'll wander around looking for them on and off for months after.

My sister and the BIL have had multiple dogs and a few cats tossed in for many years. They live up on their own property well out of town. Each time one of the animals has passed on the burial has been on the property and the other pets have seen and smelled the body. It seems like having seen the body they don't like it and will be depressed for a while. But I saw that they accept it and re-adjust more readily as opposed to homes in the city where the other animal just simply doesn't come home ever again. For my friends with pets where that is the case they say that the searching and expectation that the passed on pet will someday show up or jump down out of the car when the folks come home seems to last for months. It may sound silly but perhaps it's a case of the city animal lacking a sense of closure by not being able to see and smell the body of the passed one.

Cats? I'm sure that those that play together will miss each other for a while. But cats are so independent that I doubt it lasts for long. I think it's a stronger trait for dogs because of their being more of a pack oriented animal.

[facetious]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuOCeJSQCTs&app=desktop

This was just sent to me.

We have had Jacks for twenty years and when we lost our first one "Critter" the other two never did get over it all the way. Our rat dog "Skittles"just lost any intrest in doing the things that he did with his buddy. "Pearl" never got the spark back the she had. We got another Jack "Cookie" in 2009 when we lost Critter and thy excepted her but it was never the same. In late 2014 we lost Pearl and Skittles with in weeks of each other. Cookie went in to depression bad so we got another Jack puppy. He was kind of a rescue, had a bad hip on the left rear but it never slowed him down. We had him for five years, and every day he let me know when it was time for our walk and then one day he didn't want go any more. We took him to the vet and found he had bone cancer, we lost him a few weeks later. Now Cookie would whine when ever I left for work, and the wife said she would get in her box and not come out till I came home. She figured out that some times you can leave and never come back. We got another Jack pup "Boomer" just over a year ago and she took to mothering him but he six years younger then she is and kind of got tired of him, he is like he is on meth or some thing, some times as far as I can tell he only has two speeds "sleep and full speed flat out " So the wife come home with another pup "Loki" for him to play with. Loki came from a puppy rescue by way of the vet. All we know was she was part of a litter that some one dumped along a road in Oklahoma some where. Papers just say "hound mix". But we think she is a Pit/Ridgeback/? mix. At what we think is nine months she is 30lbs she can give Boomer a good work out and thy are getting to be buds. And Cookie can still put them in their places.

So yes thy know and can miss the ones thy love when thy go.

[jonp]

No, be careful to not anthropomorphise

[kmw1954]

No, be careful to not anthropomorphise

So I'm guessing you feel animals do not feel emotion or have a sense of self?