Behavior

Fractious cats are an inevitable part of small animal practice. A client's decision to return to your hospital for future veterinary services may hinge on how the doctor and staff deal with these patients. In fact, your level of achievement in the "art of practice" is seen vividly in your ability to deal with these difficult patients.

The most common behavior problem of cats is inappropriate elimination (IE). It is the cause of owners taking drastic measures including banning the cat to the outdoors, abandonment, surrender to a shelter, and euthanasia. It is important that a simple cookbook answer not be used for these cats as is illustrated by the approach that I use.

Feline housesoiling still represents the most common reason cat owners seek behavioral advice from their veterinarian. Inappropriate elimination can be seen in all ages and breeds of cats and often can be frustrating to resolve. The causes are multiple and sometimes complex.

In some situations, practitioners are left trying to determine whether an animal's behavioral change reflects a medical issue or a behavioral problem. This distinction is fuzzy and frequently artificial. An individual's genetics, behavior and physiology are so intimately entwined with each other as to make them inseparable as discreet components.

For decades, dog behavior has been interpreted using a linear dominance hierarchy extrapolated from a wolf-pack model. This has led to the pervasive use of dominance constructs to incorrectly explain a variety of dog behavior problems. In particular, aggressive behavior has been erroneously equated with dominance.

Behavior problems are frustrating, emotionally taxing, and often dangerous to the animal or those around the animal. They can also pose a huge financial burden in terms of potential liability and resources for attempted resolution of the problem(s).

Behavior questions and concerns are pervasive among veterinary clientele. Clients should always be offered the option of seeing a veterinary behaviorist; however, in many cases a veterinary behaviorist may not be locally available; the client may refuse such a referral; or the pet's problem may be amenable to simple alterations in the client's training process (or lack thereof!).

Veterinary behaviorist Dr. Gary Landsberg addresses the short-term vs. long-term solutions for clients whose dogs exhibit this form of noise reactivity.

Use this questionnaire at any and all visits to help clients review subjects about which they might have questions.

Dr. Valarie Tynes has advice for resisting those begging eyes.

Dr. Valarie Tynes helps a client with a dog that has an unusual habit when visiting friends.

Dr. Jacqueline C. Neilson gives her recommendations for clients with 6- to 8-month-old puppies that wake in the middle of the night to go outside.

Find out why tooth extraction may not solve the problem of a biting dog.

Image Quiz: Can you clue in on canine anxiety?

How to reduce the risk.

There are no bad patients-just fearful and stressed ones. By remembering that, watching for warning signs, and taking a less-is-more approach, you can help patients and keep yourself safe.

Keeping animals in your clinic or hospital as calm and comfortable as possible should be the goal of the entire staff.

Canine body language isn't necessarily easy to read.

How effective is "clipnosis"?

A commercially available synthetic canine pheromone is marketed to produce a calming effect in dogs encountering stressful situations such as kenneling, separation anxiety, and fear.

A reader tip for handling fractious cats.

Dogs with noise phobias can benefit from drugs given before or during an anxiety-provoking event or even as lifelong daily drug therapy.

Exposing dogs to a synthetic pheromone before surgery may help the dogs be more comfortable perioperatively.

Veterinary dentist Dr. Daniel Carmichael weighs in on whether tooth extraction is viable for treating an aggressive dog.

The term dominance-related aggression is not only simplistic but is often inaccurate.

How to recognize problems and implement appropriate client interventions.

For many years, we taught clients who live with dogs who bite that the problem is likely 'dominance' – the dog is possessing over space, food or other resources to establish a hierarchical position. While some aggressive reactions may be due to the dog's perceived need to guard a resource, there is no evidence that interactions with humans aim at establishing rank.

Cats who eliminate outside the litter box pose serious problems for owners that may force the family to place, surrender or euthanize the cat. In many cases, treatment is highly effective with resolution rates between 80-90% if the problem has been properly diagnosed.

Aggression to family members or persons who are familiar with the aggressive dog accounts for the majority of cases presented to veterinary behaviorists. Causes for this behavior vary greatly and may include competitive aggression, fear aggression, pain induced aggression or maternal aggression.

One of my dear friends and colleagues – a veterinary cardiologist – often teases me that behavior can't really be that hard. She thinks that a behaviorist's work rarely exceeds the advice to add another litter box. While it's true that implanting a pace maker is more impressive than 'adding a litter box', I like to emphasize that I'm able to keep more pets in their families and alive when we compare our case outcomes. This hasn't always been the case.