Out of the Doghouse and onto the Couch

When I spoke with Eunice and Bonnie, I could hear the desperation in their voices. Both pet owners were stumped by their failure to ease the new arrivals into their loving families.

All too often, unsuspecting animal lovers adopt a new pet, only to have it react violently or uncontrollably. Far too many family dogs and cats are surrendered to animal shelters for biting, scratching, urinating in the house, barking, ignoring their owners' commands and other problems. Each year, between three and six million dogs and cats are deemed unadoptable because of bad behavior and are euthanized, according to national animal shelter statistics. And up to 90% of the dogs put to sleep by veterinarians had nothing physically wrong with them--they are killed solely because of behavioral problems.

Ironically, this occurs at a time when, more than ever, dogs and cats are considered bona fide family members. Gone are the days of pets as mere protection against burglars or mice: Nearly 70% of the 80 million Americans who own pets say they give their dogs and cats as much attention as they do their children, according to national surveys. Half admit they even leave answering machine messages for their animals when they are away.

Treating pets like family may partially explain why good pets go bad. It's also how my personal form of therapy works to solve their problems. Having been an animal behavior therapist for 14 years, I am often sought out as a last resort to try to tame misbehaving animals before they are given away--or euthanized. I have adapted the same approach I've used for more than 20 years to successfully counsel abused children, couples in marital therapy and chronically ill patients. Called Structural Family Therapy, it treats dog and cat behavioral problems with radical results. Though other behaviorists, especially those who belong to organizations such as the Animal Behavior Society or the Association of Pet Dog Trainers, are beginning to adopt these concepts for use with animals, as far as I know, I'm the first to have fully developed a pet behavior program around this specific form of therapy.

Structural Family Therapy, first created by family therapist Salvador Minuchin, involves changing the organization of the family and the way members relate to each other. The program has been tested and validated in dozens of scientific studies, including one this year in the Journal of Marriage and Family Counseling. The main premise is that once the hierarchy of the family group is transformed, the relationships of family members can be altered for the better. For example, I once treated a single father of two teenage daughters, the younger of which was chronically shoplifting and skipping school. It mined out that the father had unknowingly elevated the older daughter to the status of surrogate wife and mother, changing family dynamics and causing the younger sister, confused, to act out for attention. Only by restructuring the family, so that the father served as an authority figure above both his daughters in the group hierarchy, could I resolve the youngest daughter's behavior.

This sort of structural therapy can help families with pets. I have found that in pet households, a power hierarchy, with repeated patterns of relating to each other, underlies the functioning of the group. It sets the rules and boundaries for the family. The only effective way to correct improper pet behaviors is to make clear where the pet stands in relation to the rest of the family. Since half the animal behavior problems I see stem from a pet's isolation, lack of nurturing or unclear emotional boundaries with their owners (genetics and biological problems also play a role), the entire household must change the way they interact with their pet in order for the pet's behavior to improve.

Problems mostly occur when boundaries between a pet and its owner become too enmeshed or disengaged. By enmeshed, I mean that there are no clear hierarchical positions or there are inappropriate crossings of those lines--for example, when an owner responds to every little attention-getting action the pet performs, making the dog or cat believe that it's in the driver's seat. This often leads to acts of dominance, aggression and separation anxiety. A disengaged boundary, on the other hand, is inappropriately rigid, occurring when owners are too distant from their pets, fostering a feeling of lack of belonging and often leading to fear-induced aggression, barking or meowing, and urine spraying or marking.