Placebo effect in pets

[Catherine]

Most of us are familiar with the placebo effect in medicine. When given medicine people will respond by getting better even when they were given a placebo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo

Studies are being done to understand this effect in veterinary medicine. It is more complex because animals are given medicine by a care giver. The pets don't have the expectation of medication working, their care givers have expectations.
This is further complicated by the fact that the animal might have been recovering naturally, but can't tell us that.
Because the owner is giving medication(even if it is a placebo) and paying more attention this also might help the animal improve.

A real placebo effect happens when the owner gives the medication and perceives that the animal is improving even if it is not.
This is a problem in veterinary medicine. The animal can't tell us how bad things are or just how much pain they are in. If we as  human care givers believe that we are effectively treating pain we might actually see signs of improvement that are not real.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...bo/601489/

Particularly in pain treatment the placebo effect could be a very negative experience for our pets. I can take a placebo pill and my headache goes away because I think it will go away. The headache is still gone.
I can give a placebo pain killer to a pet and believe that the pet's pain has gone away. I feel better about it, but the pet is still in pain.

This effect is going to need to be considered by veterinarians when treating our pets. It is going to effect how they evaluate new treatments for various animals. Certainly it would be better to treat our pet's pain even if we are not sure they are in pain. If a veterinarian suggests pain killers we should take the suggestion seriously and we should follow through in giving the medication.