Hey all. Glad to read your previous posts. I'm giving Cerenia to my little girl today for the first time. She does get motion sickness despite several successful short trips, sometimes it's just the excitement of arriving that causes her to vomit. She does best if she's restrained in her car seat and I sit next to her and pet her with a calming voice telling her things she knows, like talking about her toys, going for a walk etc. etc. I can do this while my husband is driving and when I'm alone I put her in front in the car seat. This trip will be roughly 2 hours and I'd like to sit in the front seat with my husband but it might be too much anxiety for her to sit alone.
We've tried to desensitize the car so we only use it for happy trips (thankfully our vet and groomer are in walking distance!) she has toys in the car and our destinations are always happy places.
I can tell she enjoys looking out the window and she's glad to be wherever we are when we get there - it's just the getting there!
Some background, Lily is blind in one eye
from an accident caused when she was just a few months old (before we adopted her). My gut instinct is that having only one sighted eye does cause her some problems with motion by not being able to get that true balance. Just thinking about driving around with one eye shut, I can imagine it must be tough for her but she's such a trooper. We limit or don't give her food before trips, sometimes I schedule things early in the morning so I know she has an empty tummy and I can give her breakfast soon after. I always give her a LONG walk before car rides to help calm her. I know these things have helped because she used to just shake when she got into the car but now she'll tolerate it and we have about a 20% success rate without any vomit on trip less than 15 minutes.
SO in comes Cerenia
I asked the vet to prescribe this medicine for her because we're leaving for a short weekend visit to the in-laws in San Diego this weekend. We'll leave later this evening, about 7 or 8pm. She had a good breakfast this morning and she'll get in some good long walks today to help wear her (and empty her) out! I'm planning on giving her the tablets at 4pm so that the meds have 3-4 hours to get into her system before we leave. I planned to give her the medicine in about 1TBS of wet food as that's the only way she's taken tablets in the past and at least she'll have some easily digestible food in her stomach that's not too much. I'll fast her from any other food or treats today.
Here's my question (if you made it this far!! Sorry for the long message) The directions say to prevent motion sickness in a 10lb dog, the dosing should be 2x24mg tablets. However my vet only gave me 4x16mg tablets and said try one and if it doesn't work, give her two - which are the instructions for acute vomiting and not the higher dose suggested for preventing motion sickness. Any thoughts?
Please let me know if any of your babies have had luck with this and what the dosing was. I so appreciate your feedback and I'll be sure and post our story (hopefully a successful one!) when we return on Sunday/Monday.
Many thanks! xo