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Pet Pharm
Saturday September 10 at Noon on CBC-TV &
It’s often said you can know a society by how well it treats its children. Increasingly, it seems, we need to add pets to the equation.
Claire Labelle refuses to give up on her dog, Timi, despite his aggressive behaviour. Photo Credit: Emily Lockhart
People now commonly see their pets as part of the family. Pet spas offer “pawdicures”; celebrity chefs dish up treats at pet delis; and everything from braces to stem cell transplants to heart surgery is now available for your pet, assuming you can afford it.
The newest trend is the most controversial and revealing: psychoactive drugs for dogs and cats. Identifying a multi-billion dollar untapped market, Big Pharma has just released a handful of designer drugs for pets, treating aggression, separation anxiety, obesity, and “doggie Alzheimer’s”, with more medications to follow.
Is the popularity of these “pooch-me-up drugs”, as some wags call them, a sign of our heightened compassion, or evidence of an overindulgent society chasing its tail?
Dr. Ian Dunbar, founder of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers, applies his own celebrated brand of lure/reward training when working with his dog, Dune.
“Pet Pharm” is a controversial exploration of a hot topic that has a timeless edge, a character-driven story focused on North America, but also following developments in Japan, the next frontier and great untapped market for psychoactive drugs for pets, such as Prozac for puppies.
This is much more than a story about our relationship to our pets; it’s about our relationship to ourselves. “Pet Pharm” will captivate not only pet-lovers, but also a mass audience curious about who we are as a society, and what we are becoming.
“Pet Pharm” is the creation of a skilled team of filmmakers--director Patrick Reed and producer Peter Raymont’s previous collaborations include the award-winning “Shake Hands with the Devil” and “Triage: Dr. James Orbinski’s Humanitarian Dilemma”.
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