The FDA has approved a drug that might make your dog less scared of fireworks

Fireworks
(Image credit: Christopher Polk/Getty Images)

If your dog, like mine, is transformed from a gallant defender of the castle into a whimpering skulker at the sound of fireworks or thunder, you may soon be able to drug that fear right out of them.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved a medicine for pets with noise aversion, a drug called Sileo marketed as a way to calm animals without truly sedating them. "It's not a tranquilizer, per se," Dr. Gary Yarnell, a vet in New York, told CBS SF. "It works on the nervous system to inhibit the release of adrenaline or nor-epinephrine."

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.