Claire Hargrave

Helping kittens to become confident cats—why they and their owners need the support of the veterinary team. Part 2: environmental effects and support

There are a number of pre- and post-natal environmental effects that can affect the kitten's capacity to develop emotional resilience to both the social and physical aspects of a domestic environment.

Helping kittens to become confident cats – why they and their owners need the support of the veterinary team. Part 1: genetic barriers

The earliest evidence of our domestic cat's original ancestor comes from 11 million years ago (Bradshaw et al, 2012) and from this evolved a range of species including the ‘wild cat’. Of these it is...

Effective strategies to support the emotional and behavioural welfare of canine clients

Feline stress in a nutshell — why does it occur, how can it be recognised, and what can be done to alleviate it?

Even the owners of highly sociable indoor cats will describe the frequent tendency of their cat to actively desire periods of solitary independence. This level of freedom to remove themselves from the...

Canine stress in a nutshell — why does it occur, how can it be recognised, and what can be done to alleviate it?

A dog's natural response to a novel encounter with a stimulus (whatever it is) is one of preparatory arousal (Gray, 1987) — it is this initiation of a stress response that will enable an appropriate...

Let's talk about stress

Stress is an emotional and physiological response to change in an animal's environment (Mills et al, 2013). Such change is brought about by the presence of a ‘stressor’ which can be a stimulus that is...

When does inter-cat communication become inter-cat aggression?

Communication (from Latin commūnicāre, meaning ‘to share’) can be defined as the process of sending a message from one individual to another with the purpose of modifying the behaviour of the...

Desensitisation and counterconditioning — not a task for the enthusiastic amateur!

Learning is a change in an animal's capacity for expressing a behaviour due to a particular experience (Lieberman, 1993). Learning is about how the environment alters behaviour (Mills, 2009); although...