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Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves Hardcover – June 10, 2014

by Laurel Braitman (Author)

123 customer reviews

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** “Science Friday” Summer Reading Pick**
**Discover magazine Top 5 Summer Reads**
**People magazine Best Summer Reads**

“[A] lovely, big-hearted book…brimming with compassion and the tales of the many, many humans who devote their days to making animals well.” —The New York Times

Have you ever wondered if your dog might be a bit depressed? How about heartbroken or homesick? Animal Madness takes these questions seriously, exploring the topic of mental health and recovery in the animal kingdom and turning up lessons that Publishers Weekly calls “Illuminating…Braitman’s delightful balance of humor and poignancy brings each case of life….[Animal Madness’s] continuous dose of hope should prove medicinal for humans and animals alike.”

Susan Orlean calls Animal Madness “a marvelous, smart, eloquent book—as much about human emotion as it is about animals and their inner lives.” It is “a gem…that can teach us much about the wildness of our own minds” (Psychology Today).

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, June 2014: As a kid, Laurel Braitman read Charlotte’s Web and suspected that animals really could talk. As a PhD student at MIT studying scientific history, she again honed in on animals in her research. But it wasn’t until she and her husband adopted a Bernese Mountain Dog named Oliver that animal psychology became the puzzle she most urgently wanted to solve. Oliver was inexplicably, uncontrollably anxious, snapping at invisible flies and shredding furniture when he was left alone. When he chewed through a screen, leapt from a fourth-story window, and—incredibly--survived, Braitman became intent on finding a way to help him. In Animal Madness, she shares how “one anxious dog brought me the entire animal kingdom.” Elements of memoir make the story more poignant, but it’s primarily a lively, deeply researched history and an unflinching look at the trauma of modern-day captivity in medical labs and faux-natural zoos. What she discovered about how animal minds go awry and the ways their disorders--from depression to anxiety to OCD and PTSD--look so much like our own (and vice versa) challenge and transform our understanding of the animal experience. What she discovered about how they heal illuminates how humans, too, can come back from the brink. --Mari Malcolm

From Booklist

Humans aren’t the only animals that suffer from emotional thunderstorms, and author Braitman came to the same conclusion that Charles Darwin arrived at: that nonhuman animals can suffer from mental illnesses that mirror those that humans endure. Starting her fascinating account of animal neuroses with her own dog, who snapped at nonexistent flies and jumped out of a fourth-floor window, Braitman began to read scientific papers and historical literature, eventually traveling to many countries in search of troubled animals and to observe what people did to help them. She found parrots that plucked out their feathers and primates who pulled out their hair, elephants that were so aggressive that their mahouts feared for their lives, tigers with facial tics, and a neurotic donkey who loves massages. The wonderful thing she discovered is that it is possible for these animals to heal, a message crystallized by her encounters with “friendly” gray whales who sought out human contact, even though they still bore harpoon scars from the whaling days. Acknowledging mental illness in other animals, and helping them recover, obviously can be a comforting experience. --Nancy Bent

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Product details

Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1st edition (June 10, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1451627009
ISBN-13: 978-1451627008
Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.1 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 123 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #748,083 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #213 in Books > Science & Math > Biological Sciences > Zoology > Animal Behavior & Communication
- #4287 in Books > Science & Math > Evolution
- #5801 in Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology > Fauna

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Lee Charles Kelley

How Speaking on Command Helped Cure My Dalmatian Freddie's Panic Attacks

August 14, 2014

Format: Hardcover

Excellent work, Laurel. Very enjoyable. Thank you for mentioning me and my Dalmatian Freddie (who passed away in 2007 at the age of 15).

I would just like to point out that when I gave my Freddie the "Speak!" command while he was in the throes of one of his panic attacks (as you discuss on p. 50), barking didn't "distract him" as you seem to think it did. As soon as he barked -- as soon as that first loud "Woof!" came out of him -- he went from being a terrified, trembling mass of jelly to a completely normal dog. The moment before, he would be trembling, his tail between his legs, his head down, his ears back, he was in a total panic, and I had to hold onto the leash for dear life to keep him from running in any and all directions. But as soon as he barked he was instantly back to normal and would look up to me as if to say, "Why are we just standing here? I thought we were going to park."

So, no, it didn't distract him. It totally polarized his emotional state, taking him from a blind panic to his usual happy and easygoing self.

I should also mention that besides being a trainer, I also board dogs. And I usually have a full house on the 4th of July and New Year's Eve. And every year there's at least one dog who starts to panic when he or she hears the fireworks. If I can get the dog to bark at the fireworks (or on summer nights, the thunder), the dog will usually settle down pretty quickly and go back to sleep. So this isn't about distracting the dog. It's about taking the dog from a fearful state, and facilitating a complete transition back to normal.

Thanks again for mentioning me and Freddie!

- LCK

One person found this helpful

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Compassionate Coexistence!

June 22, 2014

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

The author tries to explain how aniamals are basically driven mad by the actions of humans, and that if we learned to compassionately coesixt with other species we would all be better off.

Early in the book the author does a nice job of showing how Alzheimers in humans and dementia in dogs are closely correlated, with the primary difference being that due to the shorter life span of dogs they don't have time for plaque to build up in their brains but instead suffer dementia from atherosclerosis [hardening and narrowing of cranial arteries].

She also points out how anxiety occurs among the lower ranking animals of a pack or group with their brains being constantly bathed in stress hormones as opposed to the higher ranking members who suffer from much less stress which can correlate nicely to the differences in human society between the very well off and the middle and lower ranking members of society trying to make do.

Something that I never realized before is the primate mothers who were raised in isolation as babies, say in old time zoos and circuses do not know how to nurse and will often push their young away. They are now provided with lactation consultants by watching other primates nurse theier young and sometimes even human surogates, this use of human females as surrogates more frequently done in poorer countries.

We are also told that as late as the later 19th century, it was thought that animals contracted rabies as punishment for some evil act they had done, and throughout the 19th and well into the twentieth century homesickness was considered a physical illness with the terms nostalgia and homesickness being used interchangeably. [p71]

Trichotillomania [pulling out your own hair] an anxiety reaction and now considered as a form of OCD in the latest DSM-V affects about 1.5% of males and 3.5% of females in the USA. It is also present in six other primates besides humans as well as among mice, rats, guinea pigs, rabbits, sheep, musk oxen, dogs, and cats. [p144]

The author documents some animal suicide behavior with the most famous member being a dolphin named KATHY [the mani one of six] that played the part of FLIPPER on the 1960s TV show of that name. She literally died in the arms of her trainer, Ric O'Barry on 4/12/1970. [p166] I loved that show, and who didn't love FLIPPER?

We are told that 14-17% of all the dogs in the USA suffer from some degree of separation anxiety.. [p220] And how elephants become so attached to their mahouts that they are jealous of all other human companions of the mahouts to the point of being aggressive towards other humans, which can lead to a very celebate lifestyle for the mahouts. :-0

And last but not least we learn that 10-15% of the gray whales who come to the lagoons off Baja.Mexico to calve and mate prefer human company to associating with their own species and will actually come up to small boats and make eye contact and let people pet them. LIke, how cool is that!

This is a great book, easy to read, full of facts of which I have merely brushed the surface, and t goes a long way in showing the interconnectedness of mental process between humans and other species. HIghly recommended.

27 people found this helpful

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March 17, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This will give you a whole new perspective on ourselves and non-human animals. How millions and millions are drugged with psychopharmaceutical drugs because their very existence is intolerable. There are bright spots also where people and animals are doing the right thing. VERY READABLE!

2 people found this helpful

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Alice Friedemann

One of the most fun, interesting books I have read in a long time

January 15, 2016

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Very fun read, very interesting, makes me wonder about the feral Siamese cat we've fed for 6 years that's as scared of us as the first day - no doubt this is the very meaning of being wild, but it also seems like madness not to learn that we only mean well...

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July 6, 2017

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

It's a very good book.

Comment

CLB in Syracuse

Animal Mental Health

July 9, 2014

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Interesting, book even if the writing style is a bit dry.. Author is a "historian of science" so there are frequent references to scientific studies.If you're able to get by this, or enjoy scientific references, The book confirms what I've always found to be true (in my limited world): animals have a rich and varied emotional life. Mess with their emotional needs and you come up with unstable animals. Animals can also fall victim to the biologically based mental illnesses that also affect humans....and there are available treatments. Human. Animal. The difference is only in degrees. If this book will help just one person understand that there is human sentience and animal sentience, human emotional lives and animal emotional lives, then this book has served its purpose. Heck, even the U.S. Army has a P.T.S.D. program for war dogs coming home from duty in war zones!!!

3 people found this helpful

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Wyatt K. Mccrea

I picked this partially because I have a rescue dog ...

September 18, 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I picked this partially because I have a rescue dog with plenty of issues. Interesting from many viewpoints. I had no idea how many animals, both domestic and zoo animals, were given drugs to alter their problems.

One person found this helpful

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Bookasuarus Rex

Excellent, informative,

September 14, 2016

Verified Purchase

Bought this for my wife. She says it is the best book she has read in years.

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