Review | Book review: Pets on the Couch - are your animals anxious or autistic?
Modern medicines developed for humans can also help animals with anxiety disorders, autism, dementia and Tourette’s, says academic Nicholas Dodman
By Nicholas Dodman
Simon & Schuster
Opinion is changing about anthropomorphism, once considered fuzzy, unscientific and almost wishful thinking that animals could share human characteristics.
René Descartes is to blame for such limited thinking. So is British zoologist C. Lloyd Morgan (1852-1936), from whom came the “default” position in animal research that rendered them automatons incapable of cognition or emotion.
In Pets on the Couch, Nicholas Dodman of Tufts University not only puts paid to these beliefs but also shows how modern medicines, developed for humans, can help animals afflicted with everything from obsessive-compulsive disorder to forms of autism, dementia and even Tourette’s syndrome. The stories (not all of them happy) tell of dogs, cats, horses and birds unfortunate enough to suffer psychological and biological problems.
Readers’ eyes may glaze over with some of the specific drug information but otherwise the book is gripping and will hold the attention, especially of pet owners at their wits’ end about how to save their animals from further suffering.
