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Think Twice Before You Send Your Dog to a Psychiatrist!May 08 '01 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Get referrals from people and contact them to find the best trainer or specialist.
Many people have tried to change their dog's aggressive behavior by sending it to a vet who is trained in behavior modification. I'm sure that there are some specialist that know what they are doing, but you need to really check into them before spending the money and wasting your time. Our puppy was about 9 months old and had a tendency to growl, especially with the children. She never would bite, but I wanted to get this under control, before she started biting people. We took her to our vet who gave us different things to try. Nothing seemed to change her. She would growl at all times, even when she was laying in your lap. Finally the vet. sent us to a specialist in behavior modification. He had us complete a 5 page form about the dog. We had to list every trait that we could think of about her. Then we had to list all the commands that she responded to, her daily routine, how she walked on a leash, etc. We then had to write down every time that she growled and what she was doing when it occurred. I thought this was great, the specialist was being very thorough. I thought that maybe we had found the answer. We sent the forms to the specialist and after he reviewed them, we had to set up a 2 hour appointment with the whole family and the dog. The cost was $250.00. The specialist took our dog and walked her on the leash and gave her simple commands that she followed. Then he took her into his office with us and sat down and watched her while she was off the leash. He talked with us about the forms that we filled out, telling us what we were doing right and wrong with training her. We sat there for 2 hours with the dog running around sniffing everything in the office. We had to ignore her so that he could see how she reacted. Finally, he made his diagnosis. The dog was spoiled and wanted more attention than we should be giving her. I said OK, but what about the growling? Is she agressive? Will she attack anyone? He reassured me that she was not agressive, since she hadn't growled once in the 2 hours that we were there. He gave me different ways to "unspoil" the dog. As we got up to leave, our dog growled at one of our kids. The specialist looked at us and said, "Is that what she does?" I told him, that we had been telling him this for the past 2 hours. Well, he said, "I'm sorry, your dog is very agressive. You can either come back for another 2 hours of treatment, or if you'd like, you can buy my book and try the treatments listed in it". Needless to say, we left and never came back. However, we did report his name to the Vet. Association. Always check thoroughly before spending a dime on these so called specialist. Get referrals and contact them before going to see one.  |
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