Dogs are man’s best friends. But what do you do when your best friend attacks the postman, chews up your couch and then pisses in the corner? The same thing you do when your kids make too much noise with the new Playstation you bought them; drug them.
That’s right better living through chemistry finally extends to your pets. A product called Poyz purports to keep your dog calm with a non-addicting supplement made from all natural ingredients. Need I remind you folks that Heroin comes from an all natural ingredient? So does Cocaine for that matter.
What is it with our country and generation that insists that drugs are always the answer? Last spring I wandered around Hamburg, Germany with my wife. We saw more dogs than I care to think about, and rarely were they on a leash. On the other hand, those dogs rarely, if ever, barked and they were always right there by their owners. I wonder how many of those dogs were on pet prozac? No, chances are they were trained the way that humans and animals have been trained for millenia; good behavior is rewarded and bad behavior is punished.
But reward and punishment takes consistency and time. Drugs are way faster, and you only have to deal with it around pill time.
If you haven’t seen the Kids in the Hall’s Brain Candy you should give it a go. The entire film is about the need to have drug induced happiness. The original intention of the drug in the film is to help chronically depressed people function in society, which is what anti-depressants used to be for. One of my favorite lines in the film is, “We made the drug for people so depressed they couldn’t get off the floor, not because they missed the bus or they look bad in a yellow hat.” And that’s what those drugs should be for.
If your son is flying off the handle every day at school and biting his teachers, he might need some meds. But maybe you should try playing catch with him on the weekends first. Or taking away the Playstation you bought him. If your dog tries to bite the mailman put him in a cage when the mail is delivered and give him a treat for sitting there quietly. Dogs are fairly stupid, but they can be taught. After all, a bunch of monkeys sorted out how to do Shakespeare.
Tune in next time when Jeff bears all about his elf-ear fetish.
Amanda | 17-Apr-08 at 10:39 pm | Permalink
I love you for saying this.
And I *am* medicated (most of the time).
The thing is, meds are supposed to be a temporary support to stabilize people while they are getting therapy. Like you said, pick them up off the floor, but only enough that the therapy can have an effect.
Some people need the meds more long-term, like the little boy who bites his teachers. And me (I don’t bite my profs, but I do have a chemical imbalance). But even here, therapy and parental/social intervention will help. Maybe then bitey child won’t need quite so *many* meds.
If people think the only way to manage their child’s or pet’s behavior is through drugs, perhaps they shouldn’t have kids or animals. Not until they learn how to be responsible caregivers. (I know that sounds facist, but I’m tired of seeing kids medicated to their eyeballs, hardly able to stay awake, getting brain damage from over-medication because they played the “but why?” game one too many times.)