St_Kurt

This is kind of off-topic, but it is a personal pet peeve of mine so I felt like jumping in and nipping this weird urban legend in the bud.

Ketamine is sometimes used in large animal medicine for its sedating properties - if someone needs to examine a laceration on a horse's leg without getting the S kicked out of them for instance. We also use it in cats and dogs as a pre-medication before anesthesia (like for a spay or neuter). The most common veterinary use for ketamine however, is in lab rodents. So, if you were going to call it as an exclusively veterinary drug, you'd really have to say it's a "small animal tranquilizer" since that's what it usually is.

But it's not an exclusively veterinary drug. It is also an extremely popular sedative/tranquilizer in human medicine, and used in the exact same way (pre-operative sedation and as a synergist with lower potency tranquilizers where no general anesthesia is used.)

Why do doctors chose to use it? It has very profound analgesia with no accompanying muscle paralysis - meaning that pain is well controlled without depressing the respiratory drive. (Unlike say, opiates, which strongly depress respiration.)

So, now that that's over with, here's what I'm trying to say:

There are NO horse tranquilizers!

Or at least, no horse tranquilizers that aren't people, cat, dog, and gerbil tranquilizers as well. There seems to be this kind of bragging right where people talk about taking "Horse Tranquilizers" or "Elephant Tranquilizers" like that makes them a much cooler more hard core drug addict. It really irks me when I hear it.

With very few exceptions (such as the fact that a single tylenol can kill a cat) any drug that can be used in a person can be used in an animal with the same effect; only the dosages are altered.

The only species specific tranquilizers that I know of are for fish.

And there you have it. Thank you for putting up with me. It was an itch that I just had to scratch.

~SK