GUIDES

Behavior & Enrichment

A bored pet and a confused owner are the same problem seen from two sides. The behavior and enrichment guides explain the reasons behind everyday cat and dog behaviors (without reading human motives into them) and give you hands-on setups and training exercises you can run at home.

What these guides will and will not claim

Behaviour writing goes wrong in two directions: it either attributes human motives to an animal, or it promises a fix that depends on a history nobody has seen. The guides here stay with observable behaviour (what the animal does, in what situation, and what has already been tried) and they say plainly when a pattern needs a veterinarian or a qualified behaviourist rather than an enrichment idea.

Enrichment pages are the place to start if the problem is boredom, which is the most common cause of destructive behaviour and the easiest to change. Training and settling pages come next, since they assume the animal already has an outlet for its energy. Anything involving sudden changes in appetite, aggression toward people, or self-injury belongs with a professional, not with a website.