How can you help me?
I am a Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist with over 20 years of experience working with animals, and trained specifically to understand your animal's behavior and apply appropriate behavioral therapy.
What is the Animal Behavior Society (ABS)?
The Animal Behavior Society is a nonprofit scientific society, founded in 1965 to encourage and promote the study of animal behavior. Certification by the Animal Behavior Society demonstrates that an individual meets the Society’s educational, experiential, and ethical criteria for a professional applied animal behaviorist.
How long does it take to fix the problem?
How long has the problem been going on? How many attempts have you made to fix the problem? How much time do you have to invest in fixing the problem? Is it the complete extinguishing of the behavior or is it a level of improvement that you can accept? There are times when a mis-behavior can be transformed quickly (especially if addressed upon its onset) and there are times, the behavior will take much longer to change because the animal has, over months and years practiced and rehearsed the behavior making it more resistant to change than a newly formed mis-behavior. Think about our own bad habits. One way for people to understand the time element is to relate the question to losing weight. Yes, there are quick fixes, radical diets, and pills, but rarely do these methods produce long lasting healthy results. If you want to lose and keep off the 20 pounds, you will need to modify your eating and exercise behavior consistently and repetitively, and remove the expectation that the weight will disappear the day you decide to call in a trainer and dietitian.
What is your rate of success?
My operational definition of success is an animal that stays safely and comfortably in the home or is adopted out from a shelter into a forever home. Accordingly, my rate of success is very high. However, because I often receive the most difficult cases, some do not have a good prognosis or a favorable outcome. Factors involved in calculating success are: The animal's behavioral history, the severity/intensity of the animal’s behavior, how long the behavior has been practiced, the efficacy of the treatment plan, and owner compliance. Most unsuccessful cases are usually due to the delay to seek professional credentialed help and the animal becomes unsafe, or fair to low owner compliance (i.e., the human does not implement treatment as recommended). Fortunately, if the behavior problem is addressed in a timely manner (best upon the onset of the problem) and there is compliance, rate of success is extremely high.
What is your position on punishment?
Punishment can be effective when used properly, BUT misguided and frequent punishment can be abusive, damaging, and counter productive. Punishing tells the animal what you don’t want, it does not teach the animal what you “do” want. Punishment training often results in a very confused and nervous animal, because it lives in fear of punishment. People use punishment because it works to “stop” or “interrupt” the behavior, unfortunately in many cases, it’s like stopping for a stop sign, until the trigger presents again. Punishment can suppress the overt (observable) behavior temporarily but it does not change the underlying motivational factors which can build up emotionally over time until a potential outburst. In order to obtain long term consistent behavioral improvement, you need to replace the old behavior with a new alternative appropriate behavior and reinforce/reward it.
What is a Comparative Psychologist?
A comparative psychologist has a Ph.D. in Psychology. Comparative psychology refers to the scientific study of the behavior and mental processes of non-human animals. Research in this area addresses many different issues (comparing behavior, cognition, perception, and social relationships) uses many different methods, and explores the behavior of many different species, from insects to primates.
