Behavioural Training

We strongly believe that a thorough and personalised behaviour management plan is a critical part of addressing any behavioural problem.

Book in to see our Animal Behaviourist directly

Our animal behaviourist Dr Melissa Starling (PhD) provides you with detailed but easy to follow behavioural personalised management plans. Initially, these plans may include emergency recommendations to keep everybody safe and happy while you work on your long-term behaviour modification plan. This is especially important if she is seeing you while you wait to see one of our behaviour veterinarians for medical treatment, or while such medical treatment takes effect.

In the long-term Dr Melissa will provide you with a behaviour management and training plan to help change the behaviours that are concerning you by identifying the underlying reason for those behaviours.

Dr Melissa has a particular interest in difficult cases, especially reactivity cases, and those where clever patients just loves to outsmart you at every turn! You can be rest assured that no behaviour modification case is too difficult for her to take on!

You can book in to see Dr Melissa directly, or you may be given an internal referral by one of our behaviour veterinarians, as outlined below.

If you are already seeing our Behaviour Veterinarians

If one of our behaviour veterinarians is the primary clinician looking after your case, they will provide you with a thorough overview of what you need to know about behaviour modification, training and environmental management during your time with them. Depending on the complexity of the case, the patient’s previous training history and your own training skill set, the advice discussed during these consultations will be sufficient to equip you with what you need to do to manage the problem.

However, in some cases your behaviour veterinarian may recommend that you concurrently seek the help of an animal behaviourist, behavioural trainer or other professional to help you implement these strategies in a practical way, particularly if you need a lot of help troubleshooting your handling skills. We liken this to a human GP or psychiatrist referring you to a psychologist, yoga instructor or personal trainer to help you learn the specific skills you need to get better, faster. The same goes for our pets!

If you were already working with a good trainer or animal behaviourist before seeing us and would like to continue working with them, we will keep them in the loop and aim to work together as a team.

As animal training is an unregulated industry, we will help you find a suitable professional to help you if you don’t already have one on board. We may recommend that you see our own experienced animal behaviourist Dr Melissa Starling (PhD) as part of our Integrated Care Plan, or we may refer you to someone in our external professional network. If we don’t know who to refer you to, we will do our research and find someone!

Please contact us directly for personal recommendations of animal trainers, dog walkers and pet minders before you start looking for one yourself.