behavioral

Behavioral Medicine for Pets

When pets exhibit behavioral problems, they can lead to serious consequences, including damage to the healthy, loving relationship between you and your pet—and in extreme situations, may also lead to euthanasia or surrendering your dog or cat pet to a shelter.

The Noah’s Ark veterinary team has years of experience in diagnosing and addressing behavioral issues, including:

  • Human-directed aggression
  • Inter-pet aggression
  • Separation anxiety
  • Housetraining
  • Fears and phobias
  • Compulsive behaviors
  • Cognitive dysfunction

We work closely with you and your pet, using a proven approach that combines veterinary clinical medicine, behavioral medicine, and pet training. Our goal is to help you and your pet live together comfortably, safely, and happily while restoring and strengthening the bond you share.

Below are some of the physical and emotional conditions we address at Noah’s Ark.

Basic Manners

We’ll help you improve the pet-human bond through mastery of obedience skills, like leash walking, basic commands, appropriate playtime, housetraining, and more.

Fears, Phobias, and Anxiety

Sometimes behaviors like aggression and housetraining difficulties are symptoms of something larger. We’ll cover issues such as separation anxiety, fear of noises, people, or other animals, and various phobias as cause.

Socialization

Get assessment of your pet’s temperament and professional guidance in creating a plan for healthy, positive socialization with humans or other animals. We’ll adapt your plan to your pet’s individual needs, for a more effective (and less stressful) process.

Aggression

Unless properly examined and socialized to curb aggression, some pets can exhibit hostility toward humans and other animals, alongside territorial issues, hoarding, and turf-guarding.

Housetraining

Housetraining can be frustrating, even when it goes off without a hitch. But when a pet constantly relieves themselves inside the house or otherwise in the wrong place, we may need to look for a physical, medical, or emotional source of the difficulty.

Compulsive Behaviors

Over-grooming, licking surfaces, self-biting, and other compulsions can be alarming for a pet owner to witness and ultimately harmful to the pet’s own health. We’ll work to determine the cause of these behaviors and provide recommendations and treatment to curb them.

Cognitive Dysfunction

Behavioral problems can be caused or even worsened by age or disease-related memory loss, disorientation, confusion, waking and sleeping problems, separation anxiety, excessive panting, and more. We’ll help treat these issues, and provide advice on what to expect and how to adapt.

When you book an appointment at Noah’s Ark, you are guaranteed a refined, individualized treatment plan based on careful observations of you and your pet—plus their medical history, socialization skills, living situation, and all other relevant information. Behavioral problems don’t have to damage your relationship with your pet. We’ll work with you to give them a life that is healthy, happy, and well-adjusted.