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A behaviorist usually comes into the picture when no medical reason is found for a pet’s aggression, fear, anxiety, obsession, or other abnormal behavior. Before deciding on a course of action, a behaviorist will typically take the following steps:

1 Assess a pet’s living arrangements to see how the animal is interacting with family members and any other pets in the household;

2 Determine whether a pet is getting adequate exercise, nutrition, social interaction, and training; and

3 Determine whether a pet has an anxiety disorder.

Effie maintains a down position while Kathy Sdao desensitizes Nick to having his paws handled, in preparation for nail trims. Sdao is a certified applied animal behaviorist in Tacoma, Washington.

Once this information has been gathered, the behaviorist develops a program to help a pet deal with the circumstances that trigger the behavior. This can involve behavioral modification, environmental adjustments, or drug therapy. Only a veterinarian can prescribe medication, so an applied animal behaviorist who is not a veterinarian often works in partnership with one.

Behaviorists can work in many different settings. Clinical behaviorists who specialize in the behavior of companion animals work directly with clients, either in their own offices, in veterinary clinics, or at clients’ homes. Like trainers, they may hold classes for pet owners, not only to assist with training but also to help prevent or solve behavior problems.

Sometimes they are employed by pet day-care programs or humane organizations. Behaviorists can become science writers, producing content for book and magazine publishers, Web sites, and broadcast programs.

Some behaviorists, such as John Wright, go into teaching and research at the university level in animal science, biology, psychology, wildlife biology, or zoology, or at veterinary or medical colleges.

It takes a certain kind of person to be a behaviorist, someone who turns to science when seeking answers to dog training and behavior problems. The principles of a behaviorist’s approach include positive reinforcement and behavior change through rewards, prompts, and other methods, says Mary Burch, a certified applied animal behaviorist.

Brelands and Pryor: Clicker Icons

Graduate students of legendary behavioral scientist B. F. Skinner, Keller Breland and Marian Kruse (Breland) applied their professor’s concepts of operant conditioning to the worlds of advertising and entertainment. In 1943, they opened Animal Behavior Enterprises to train a variety of animals using operant conditioning. They revolutionized the use of secondary reinforcers (clickers and whistles) to train dogs (as well as pigs, cats, ducks, and hamsters) for movies and television, decades prior to the positive-reinforcement training revolution. The Brelands also trained marine mammals for the U.S. Navy in the 1960s.

Behavior biologist and dolphin trainer Karen Pryor was using the Brelands’ operant training methods at Sea Life Park in the mid-1960s. The clicker-training revolution that electrified the dog community in the 1990s was triggered by her 1984 publication Don’t Shoot the Dog (Sunshine Books), which was excerpted in Reader’s Digest. Through her book and her subsequent seminars around the country, she reached tens of millions of people. She also promoted her clicker-training methods on the Internet, still new to most people in the early 1990s. It helped deliver her gospel of positive training methods to all who cared to click on her Web site. Pryor also developed her own version of the clicker, which she called the I-clicker.