Behavior Consultation
Cost: $150/90 min. - Select pro bono work.
This is Canine Consultants’ signature work. If you’re struggling with resource guarding, dog reactivity, stranger reactivity, multi-dog conflict within your home, a fearful, anxious, a shutdown dog, or other difficult to manage behaviors, we can help by showing you how to manage, minimize, or resolve these issues. We always endeavor to completely resolve the target behavior, but depending on your goals or available time to commit to an individualized behavior modification plan, we can at least help you get to a point where you feel more comfortable and in control.
How does a Behavior Consultation work?
We will email you an intake form to fill out and return.
Once we have your form, we will arrange a phone call to discuss your concerns in greater detail, answer any questions you have, and schedule your session.
The session:
We talk for a bit. Initially, we discuss any known or possible medical conditions that could be driving their behavior. Next, we discuss your dog’s past; known trauma, past training history, etc., to help identify any chronic psychological factors that are influencing their behavior. Finally, we ask questions to establish what an average day looks like for you and your dog. We ask a variety of questions about noise/activity level of the home, amount of time spent alone, amount of exercise, and other questions to help us understand any environmental factors that are affecting your dog’s behavior.
While this discussion is taking place, we are watching your dog to get a baseline for their behavior in a low-stress situation, and allowing them to investigate or ignore us in a pressure-free interaction.
If safe to do so, we will ask you to get your dog to demonstrate the behavior so we can try to identify stressors or triggers to help us develop a plan.
We explain what we have identified as the stressors, triggers, and possible causes for the behavior, or why they lead to it so you have a better understanding of the issue.
We develop a plan for working on your dog’s behavior.
We demonstrate and teach you how to do the exercises we identify as being the most likely to help you successfully modify your dog’s behavior in a way that will not just stop the behavior, but cure the underlying cause of it.
Q&A - We will end our session by reviewing anything you wish to review and answering any questions that you have.
After your session, you will receive a written plan from us recapping what was discussed in your session, and the exercises you need to do.
Follow up. One week after your session, we will reach out by phone to see if you have any questions or concerns. At this point, we can discuss whether or not you’d like to schedule a Tune-Up Session and when.
You are unique. Your dog is unique. Your circumstances are unique. Therefore, your problem, while it may be common, is still unique, and you require a customized solution. This is something we deeply understand at Canine Consultants, and we will give you, your dog, and your issue the respect - and solution - it deserves.