Behavior Medicine

Call the Small Animal Reception Desk at 765-494-1107 for a behavioral consultation appointment.

Due to the length of behavior appointments and limited appointment slots, behavior appointments usually book out 2-3 weeks in advance.  Because of the extensive history preparation prior to the evaluation, we require that all new behavior clients leave a deposit, which will be applied towards the final cost of your visit.  We ask that any cancellations or rescheduling be made at least 48 hours in advance so that accommodations can be made for clients on our waiting list.  Exceptions will be made for changes in appointment times due to weather. 

When making an appointment, please keep in mind that we encourage as many family members as possible to attend the behavior evaluation, but it is advised to bring another adult to supervise small children.

Before your appointment, the clinician will review the behavior history form for your pet. It is very important for our team to receive the history form prior to your appointment to ensure the appropriate preparations can be made to make the consultation time as efficient as possible.

Preparing For Your Visit

How to be prepared for a behavior appointment

Please bring your pet and any family members that are involved in the behavior problem or the treatment of the problem. In most cases, especially in dogs, each animal needs to come for an evaluation visit first to meet the behavior doctor (clinician), who will make diagnoses and consider a pharmacological intervention, if it applies. Then, you and your pet will come back to learn the treatment plan at home, which is tailored by the clinician based on your pet’s behavior evaluation at the first visit.

The evaluation visit will take about 60-90 minutes, while the treatment visit will be about 60 minutes long per visit.

From our clinical experience, we have learned the cases with more communication and frequent visits to the clinic, the better outcome you and your pet will get. Therefore, each visit will include 2 months of unlimited remote follow-ups. Separately, clients can take advantage of our loyalty program, which offers discounted rates for third and subsequent visits!

If you need to bring more than one animal to the appointment, please let us know in advance. We recommend that each dog brought to an appointment has its own handler, if possible. 

There is a common waiting room for all Purdue University Small Animal Hospital services. If you are not comfortable bringing your animal into the public waiting area, please inform the reception staff when the appointment is made; you may also call 765-494-1107 when you arrive. Our staff will assist you with bringing your pet directly into our consultation room.

What to bring to a behavior appointment

For Dogs

We request that you bring your pet to the consultation hungry by skipping his or her morning meal before the appointment. This helps your pet interact with us during training and behavior modification.

For Both Dogs and Cats

Items that will be helpful to bring include:

• Favorite treats (especially if your pet has food allergies)
• Any training tools or aids that are currently or previously used (if you still have them)
• Current medication/supplements used
• Medical records or laboratory results from the last six months (or have your referring veterinarian fax them to the receptionist at 765-496-1025

Videos and photographs of your pet and his/her environment can be extremely helpful. If you can safely videotape your pet exhibiting the problem behavior (e.g. record possible separation anxiety behaviors in your pet when home alone or any behavior you are worried about) please do so. Please do not put your pet, any people, or other animals in a dangerous situation just to obtain a video. If you are bringing a cat, please bring a diagram of your house and label where the food and water dishes are as well as the litter boxes.