Behavior Therapy and Training
For serious behavior problems involving aggression, fear, reactivity and anxiety that need more than just obedience training to be resolved effectively and humanely.
Support and solutions for emotion-based problems involving aggression, fear, reactivity and anxiety that go beyond obedience training and aren’t resolved by simply taking a training class.
Treatment includes obedience skills but also incorporates specialized techniques to change the underlying emotions that trigger the problem. These techniques resolve the issue humanely at its root, rather than temporarily suppressing its outward symptoms through punishment.
Since behavior is an outward symptom of how the dog or cat is feeling inside, when we address their feelings as well as the behavior we get the long-term improvement most clients are hoping for.
We can’t make our pets’ behavior better by making them feel worse!
Depending on your needs, we can tackle:
- Aggression with family, children, strangers or visitors
- Conflicts with household or visiting pets
- On-leash reactivity, on-leash aggression
- Possessive of food, bones, toys, favorite resting spots (resource guarding).
- Separation anxiety
- Excessive barking or whining
- House soiling
- Fear of people (e.g., children, men, strangers), the veterinary clinic, grooming, car rides, noises, sudden movements, the whole wide world
- Rowdy, jumpy, mouthy (RJM) and roughhousing
- Destructive chewing or digging
- Unreliable listening and obedience skills
Getting Started
At your first 2-hour consultation appointment, we review your forms and goals, and discuss your pet’s history and current behavior.
I observe and evaluate your pet (behavior, temperament, training aptitude and motivation).
We discuss ways to manage behavior in the short term for quick relief, and outline a training plan to improve behavior in the long term, based on your goals.
You learn first steps of initial training skills, and afterward you receive support materials (handouts and videos) to review and learn more.
I provide my best estimate of prognosis: how much and how fast you can expect to improve the problem behavior(s), along with my recommendation for the number of follow-up training sessions needed.
Then you’ll schedule typically 6–12 sessions to retrain your pet and reach your goals.
You should not expect to improve your dog or cat’s behavior problem in a single visit. Both you and your pet will learn new ways of responding to the problem, and learning is a gradual, multistep process that takes time. At each session, you’ll fine-tune previous training exercises, learn and practice next steps, and troubleshoot challenges or regressions.