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Kratom Kratom for dogs

B

bluemonkey

Bluelighter
Joined
Apr 9, 2013
Messages
207
How much kratom to try giving a large dog for calming effect
My best friend has a very high strung German shepherd that weighs about 45 pounds.she is at her wits end and has tried just about everything to calm the dog down ( including training, cbd for pets, Benadryl with vet approval, Rx meds from the vet. Even per aroma therapy outlet plug-ins). Everything she’s tried either hasn’t worked or been too sedateing ( making her wonder if her pet will wake up)

If she doesn’t figure out something soon she might need to rehome the dog because it likes to damage things while she’s at work. Also the dog doesn’t do well strangers so pet sitters haven’t worked out.

So I suggested kratom and I have read a few articles that claim it’s safe and calming for dogs. The articles didn’t mention how to get the dosage right though. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.Thanks.
 
I don't know...might not be particularly toxic to dogs, but I think it would be better to avoid. Differences in CYP450 enzymes between dogs and humans could cause different effects in dogs.

More than that, even if it acts in the exact same fashion, kratom can induce some serious aggression and irritability in humans, so thats the last thing you'd want for a german shephard. Plus kratom is fairly stimulating so not sure how chill the dog would be. Additionally, the dog will get hooked on opioids and will run into issues if needs medical attention/general anesthesia.
 
Thanks for your input. If nothing else it has reminded me to check if the articles I found were peer reviewed. If they are, I will post the links here in case anyone is interested.

I’m wondering if the aggression in humans was linked to a specific vein color of kratom. This is the first I have heard of that side effect. If I had to guess I would say white vein kratom might be most likely to cause that as it is the most energizing one. Do you have links or citations for journals… especially if the articles are peer reviewed, I would be very interested to see them. Although considering that there’s a conflict of interest between pharmaceutical companies and kratom, one does have to take anything negative that one reads with a grain of salt and ask questions like: who sponsored this study? What if anything might they have to gain by making kratom look bad? I do wonder if in 50 years we will realize that 98% of negative information came from those who had a vested interest in selling pharmaceutical pain relief or maintenance medication; like how we now know that studies which said that smoking had health benefits were linked to the tobacco industry. Anyway, like I said thanks for sharing your thoughts
 
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It's a very interesting question but I doubt too many will have solid experience to reply. If you do choose to go this route just know dog's receptor systems and metabolisms are very different from humans, so please start slow. Also report back, I am genuinely curious.

For me, low dose kratom is more of a stimulant than anything else.
 
Didgital said:
For me, low dose kratom is more of a stimulant than anything else.
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What color or colors do you typically use? I have red and yellow vein because green and white give me migraines. So I offered my friend some of each color that I have to try on separate days or even weeks. She has yet to decide if she wants to take me up on it.
 
I don't personally take the plant. I extract the mitragynine and take it as is or convert it to 7-OH-Mitragynine. Colors really just indicate age of plant anyway.
 
I do not think people should give drugs to animals other than those prescribed by a vet (and like, a good vet who cares about animals, not some quack), that have been well studied.

Drugs affect everyone differently, not everyone is even a fan of kratom, and animals obviously if they have a distressing reaction will just have no idea what's happening and will not be able to voice milder unpleasant side effects that might not be obvious to their human guardian.

For the same reason I don't endorse drugging humans without their knowledge or consent, I cannot help but take a very dim view of people who consider cavalierly drugging their animals, when they are not qualified to judge what is an appropriate medical need (ie, they are not a vet).

When you say your friend thought that some vet-prescribed meds were "too sedating" - frankly I don't think your friend is qualified to judge this, and they would be better to stick with a qualified animal medical professional, bring this up, and maybe lower the dose, or try switching to a different kind of medicine before they just decide to take their pet's health completely into their own hands and administer whatever random drug that they might happen to have taken themselves or that a bunch of people on the internet suggest to them.

It seems like kratom is unlikely to be acutely poisonous but there just isn't enough known about how it affects dogs to say that it is definitely safe either, to the point that I can't see any way that giving kratom to a dog - without at least the oversight of an actual vet - is not, in the vast majority of cases, both irresponsible and immoral and not something someone should do to an animal they've decided to take on the responsibility of caring for, no matter how difficult it's behaviour might be.
 
So, everyone, we can agree to disagree. My dad is a retired pharmacist ( chemist) in England and at the beginning of his career he also worked on the manufacture side of things. According to him pet medicine that has been approved for human use comes off the same machines regardless of whether it ends up in bottles marked for human or pet use. Companies like Thomas Labs aren’t making bird antibiotics in one room and human antibiotics in a different location. It just goes into human bottles or bird bottles and is shipped to different places.
That’s why if you look at a bottle of fish doxycycline and take one of the pills out you will see the same drug identification numbers as on identical pills if you happen to have a prescription from the same manufacturer. The pills are identical down to the human safety numbers ( numbers used along with the color and shape to identify the pills). A lot of medicines are safe to give dogs in smaller amounts than you would give a human.
My mom’s dog even gets a very tiny daily Rx dose of phenobarbital from the vet because she’s had seizures in the past. Mom picks up both her Rx meds and her Dash hounds medicine from the same grocery store pharmacy. The pet bottles are smaller and red in color and obviously labeled differently but the pharmacy doesn’t have different versions of each medication in the back. If a person got phenobarbital from there, his or her pills would come out of the same larger manufacturer bottle that my mom’s dog’s pills came out of.

I’m putting a link to the safe drugs to give pets list that I found from Google. I don’t know how accurate each item on the list is, so of course always double check with your vet before using this information.

However, like I said we can agree to disagree. This reply is an attempt to sure my perspective and something about the life experiences and other information that has shaped it.

Over-the-Counter Medicines That Can be Safe for Dogs

Diphenhydramine (Benadryl®), cetirizine (Zyrtec®), and loratadine (Claritin®) are commonly used antihistamines that relieve allergy symptoms.
vcahospitals.com vcahospitals.com
This page says it’s an animal hospital. So logically unless it’s one that is just awful the information should be accurate
 
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Have benzos been tried? That's usually pretty effective especially at higher doses. Low doses of benzos can be stimulating so if the desired effect isn't achieved the dose can be titrated upward until it is. Benzos have a pretty steep dose response curve and a large therapeutic window so they're generally pretty safe and they're commonly prescribed for animals with anxiety
 
I don’t know exactly what Rxs have been tried because it’s my BFF’s dog. But thanks for the suggestion about benzodiazepines. I’ll pass it along. I’m just helping with research because Laurie hates to be on a screen outside of work.
 
It's not that animals can't be administered common drugs, they obviously can be. I'm not preaching from a high horse.

My point is kratom is not a drug, it's a plant with over 52 pharmacologically active alkaloids, most of which are completely unstudied. It's also packed full of vitamins that could potentially pose a danger to a dog.
 
Yeah, kratom also hasn't been approved for human use, so all that stuff about human and animal medicine is kinda irrelevant to your original question. My own point wasn't about the safety of manufacturing standards, although it wouldn't make sense anyway obviously for there to be species-specific forms of any given chemical, no-one was saying that. It was about the fact that it's broadly unethical to administer substances to living creatures who are not capable of giving informed consent, unless you actually have the appropriate training to know when a given substance will actually help them, ie, you are a vet or are acting on the advice of a vet.

I will admit to being on a slightly high horse about it because so many people IMO just probably should not have pets in the first place, and musing about how much kratom is safe to give to a dog for me is kinda a warning sign. Please understand this comes from a place of concern about animal welfare, I obviously have no way of knowing anything about you or your friend beyond what you've shared in this post.

Pharmaceutical GABAergics I would feel significantly less concerned about as it's just a lot harder to have an unpleasant reaction to the average tried and tested legacy benzo, and obviously they have actually been used and studied. I'm aware specifically that gabapentin in very low doses is very commonly given to cats and I believe probably dogs as well, even just to calm them down for other veterinary procedures, without much concern about adverse reactions. Since you yourself did mention about checking with a vet first, though, I hope this is also your plan.
 
I find CBD dog biscuits to be good for dogs. I would regularly give them Cannabiscuits if I still had a dog.
Vets will say that they most likely don't contain any actual CBD.
I tend to disagree with a lot of practices in modern medicine.
Animals like to feel good just like humans.
 
ions said:
Animals like to feel good just like humans.
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There is no objective way to determine if an animal is enjoying a drug experience. I'm not saying they don't or can't.

Cats and dogs are hardwired to hide illness. They typically do not show signs of pain unless it is severe or debilitating, for survival reasons.

Humans are different than animals. We constantly bitch or complain about pain, anxiety, bad trips.... animals don't. They can't. If anything they might believe they've been poisoned.

Honestly I hate this one "CBD" shop near me that is geared towards animals. Weed for your pets. Fucking stupid. Just because you enjoy weed doesn't mean your pet does.
 
I'd be wary of giving dogs a drug that is a ground up plant. In general carnivores have not evolved to handle diverse amounts of plant compounds. Things like raisens are toxic to dogs for example.

Kratom has complex pharmacology as it is a whole cocktail of active and inactive compounds (including some that have yohimbine like effects, increasing norepinephrine release).

Stick to giving dogs drugs that are approved for dogs. I knew somebody who had her dogs on .25 mg alprazolam until she realized it made her dogs more hyperactive.

Definately talk to a vet, a dog is going to have a hard time telling you how it has been poisoned by whatever you gave it.
 
I had a German shepherd and she was crazy the first couple years
Do the dog get alot of exercise? That breed needs alot of stimulation
 
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