During my long career as a vet, working mainly in animal welfare organisations, I came to realise that sadly, the primary reason for euthanasia in otherwise young, healthy animals is concern over some aspect of their behaviour. The numbers are staggering and in the USA alone more than 20 million animals are put to sleep in animal shelters each year with the majority of them having been brought there because of behavioural problems.

Behaviour plays such a critical role in the relationship between a pet and its owner and is an important consideration when choosing and keeping a pet. If behaviour becomes a problem this leads to a breakdown in the bond between the pet and its family and the consequences of this as we know are often fatal for the animal but equally devastating for the family. 

Having witnessed the tragic consequences of this breakdown in the human-animal bond over many years I wanted to do something to reverse this and qualified as a behaviourist. This would enable me to provide owners with a way to resolve behavioural problems so that pets and their owners could stay together and enhance the lives of both. As a behaviourist I also feel that I have a role in education particularly with regard to responsible pet ownership and more especially in preventative behaviour counselling so that animals do not end up being an unnecessary statistic.