Behavioral Health

Fear Free

One of the major cornerstones for how we care for your pets is to take into consideration not only the physical needs of your pets, but also their emotional status. Fear Free is a concept developed by a team of highly respected veterinary and pet professionals to help educate the world about the effects of stress and anxiety on pets and how not only medical care, but also pets’ daily lives can be transformed by recognizing and striving to eliminate these stressors! It’s been a widely accepted thought (even in pop culture) that vet visits will probably be somewhat stressful, but we want to change this!

Our favorite appointments are the ones where owners are thrilled with how well their pet did for exam or vaccines! Brittani, our wonderful RVT, and Dr. Begemann are both certified Fear Free Professionals and are committed to making our practice a happy place for our furry family members. The emotional wellbeing of your furry family member is incredibly important to us and for the overall health of your pet!

Fear Free is often about building safe, happy relationships with patients and their people through low stress handling and high value rewards, but it is also about safety and repairing negative associations with previous procedures or fears. Aggression during vet visits is often linked to fear and often hinders pets from getting care they truly need. Just because a pet acts out aggressively does not automatically mean they are bad or mean – fear is often the root cause of these actions! We deeply care about the safety of you, your pet, and our staff and in these situations, we may advise alternative courses of care through sedation, behavioral modification, or in some cases declining to proceed with an appointment. In the most severe of cases, we often will recommend rescheduling and recommend pre-appointment medications to decrease your pet’s fear response. We understand that these cases can be very stressful on everyone involved and can often be very frustrating for pet parents.

Even if it is only travel to see us that stresses you or your pet out, we can help you manage that! There are many training techniques, supplements, or medications that we can use to help decrease stress and anxiety and make your visit easier.

Fear Free is not only a set of protocols to help decrease stress and anxiety in the vet office, but it is also a promise to always keep the best interests of your pet at heart. Call us today at 405-513-5905 with any questions about what Fear Free means to you and your pets!

Pet Behavior

From seemingly simple problems like potty training difficulty to separation anxiety and aggression, we truly care about finding solutions to behavioral disorders to help the human-animal bond thrive! In many cases, these behavioral issues can be solved with training regimens, but some may be signs of more serious medical issues. Some of the most common behavior issues we treat include: storm/noise phobias, inappropriate urination/defecation, separation anxiety, inter-pet aggression, and kennel training.

We start our path to behavioral health by taking a thorough history of the issue at hand as well as medical history. Depending on our findings, the next steps may vary, but the biggest thing to keep in mind with behavior issues is that many of these plans require very dedicated work on your part to change the outcome! We understand the overwhelming nature of the behavior modification process and will work with you each step to find an appropriate solution or diagnostic step to can help put your mind at ease manage or eliminate the behaviors that worry you. There are many different options for medical management of certain behaviors from simple changes to food or adding supplements or pheromone therapy to intervention with anxiety medications.

Whether you’re looking for puppy classes or your pet needs help with certain behaviors, we can help direct you on the next steps for your pet. We only support positive reinforcement training techniques and have a wide variety of trainers in the local area that we can refer you to for classes, private lessons, or even board-and-train facilities in the event you need training opportunities outside what we can assist you with here at Okoboji.

It is our passion to ensure you and your pet have a happy, long-lived bond. If you have any worries or questions about a behavior issue, please call us at 405-513-5905.