Depressed Pussycat or Pooch? Veterinary Specialty Can Help

By the time she was 1, Mattie Adlington was destructive. She ripped a 10-by-3-foot piece of siding off her house and tore out a large section of fence.

Loud thunder or a truck’s backfire would send her into an agitated tizzy of pacing and whining. She also gnawed everything in sight.

Luckily for the San Diego owner of the black Labrador retriever, a veterinarian worked nearby with expertise in applied animal behavior. Thanks to an antidepressant he prescribed--for the dog--and a great deal of behavior modification he proposed--for the owner and the dog--Mattie has been helped “immeasurably,” said owner Darcie Adlington.

Applied animal behavior is the newest and fastest-growing specialty in veterinary medicine--and arguably one of the rarest occupations on Earth. The American College of Veterinary Behaviorists, the most recent board-certifying entity for vets, was started six years ago by eight experts in various aspects of the young field. The college has since certified only 12 others.

These select individuals are not the only ones who devote themselves to treating depressed pooches and pussycats. Professional animal behaviorists, with doctorates in zoology, behavioral science or other similar fields, also are called upon by frustrated owners, as are dog trainers, the least regulated practitioners.

But only vets are allowed to prescribe psychotropic and other drugs for Fido or Miss Kitty. Popular medicines include Valium and Clomicalm, made by Novartis Animal Health of Greensboro, N.C., and approved for dogs only in January by the Food and Drug Administration. Its chemical name is clomipramine hydrochloride, which is the basic ingredient in several human antidepressants.

With many couples working overtime and extracurricular activities keeping kids away from home, pet owners are beginning to experience the downside of loneliness in dogs and cats. When left to their own devices for extended periods, some pets experience boredom, depression or separation anxiety. Appetites wane. Barking or yowling increases. Cats forsake the litter box in favor of precious rugs and furniture; dogs shred the drapes.

And that creates plenty of work for animal behaviorists such as Leslie Cooper at UC Davis’ renowned Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital. A graduate of the university’s vet school, she became in 1995 one of the first vets to pass the new qualifying exam. She is one of just two certified animal behaviorists in California and often tells people that “I crave competition.”

Cooper grew up on a dairy farm in the Central Valley, where she got a sixth sense about cow behavior. Dogs and cats were different. “I knew when a cow was going to kick me,” she said. “But I didn’t know when a dog would bite me.”

Two decades ago, she signed up for an animal behavior program started by Benjamin Hart, a pioneer in the field who would later be a founding member of the certifying college. She took courses in ethology, the study of behaviors of animals in the wild; psychological learning theory; and counseling skills.

In the years since, she has encountered mixed reactions from owners who bring their problem pets to the teaching hospital. She has worked primarily with dogs and cats, she said, “though we do get the odd bird every once in a while, and I’ve worked with a rabbit.” Occasionally, the owner decides to give up the pet.

“We’re asking them sometimes to change their lifestyle and how they interact,” Cooper said. “We have successes and failures.”

The field is so hot that Hart, chief of the behavior service at the teaching hospital, encouraged the University of California system to establish an animal behavior branch in Rancho Santa Fe in northern San Diego County. Affiliated with UC San Diego, the satellite opened in June at the Helen Woodward Animal Center and is the only behavior service in Southern California.

Heading the branch is Patrick Melese, the vet who has treated Mattie Adlington. Though qualified to sit for the board certification exams, Melese has not yet found the 1,000 hours of time needed to “jump through all the hoops yet.”

The requirements are stiff: In addition to the vet’s degree, the candidate must have a year of post-graduate internship or general practice; complete a formal residency of two to three years at one of eight approved teaching hospitals or work with a mentor in the field; write a paper for a review journal; and complete the two-day exam.

Still, Melese has 13 years of private practice and more than 1,800 behavior cases under his belt.

He charges $200 for an initial two-hour consultation. Follow-up visits cost $100 each. Two such visits often are enough to get the owner and the pet on the road to psychological recovery.

Hart sees demand for the service growing quickly. For the next year or so, there will be a lull in applicants for certification as fledgling residency programs get up and running. Hart said salaries for specialists in the area could approach $100,000 to $200,000--well above the $60,000 to $100,000 a general practitioner with a decent practice would command.

“Vets take this area very seriously,” Hart said. Meanwhile, “there’s a lot more demand than we can fill right now.”