Meet Central Jersey's Cesar Milan: This vet can help your pet behave

A dog that whimpers all day when he’s home alone or growls when you get too close to his food dish.

A cat that won’t stop swatting at your new kitten or is terrified of the vet.

We’re all obsessed with our pets, and we want them to be healthy and happy. But whom do you turn to when it’s your pet’s behavior, not its physiology, that’s tugging on your last leash?

No, it’s not Cesar Milan. But Dr. Jennifer Feeney, a pet behaviorist based in Bridgewater, can help.

Feeney, who has 11 cats, has been a veterinarian for 30 years and works at Bridgewater Veterinary Hospital on Route 202-206. She also volunteers at the Somerset Regional Animal Shelter in Bridgewater, Animal Alliance in Lambertville, and St. Hubert's Animal Welfare Center in Madison.

With a certification in applied animal behavior, she also has her own business, Build a Better Bond Pet Behavior Management. She helps pet owners diagnose and create a behavior modification plan to remedy pet separation anxiety, aggressive, house soiling, excessive barking, fears of things like the vet or fireworks, trouble settling down at night, and more.

She was inspired to get the certification after COVID-19 when she witnessed “the nightmare that is pets with separation anxiety,” she said, as people with pets went back to the office and pets just couldn’t deal with it.

“My clients would ask me questions that I didn’t know to answer,” Feeney said. “I always had an interest in pet behavior, so I realized I needed to be doing a lot more to help these pets and their parents.”

Finding help for a pet's upsetting behavior is difficult. There are only 72 board-certified pet behaviorists in the country and two in New Jersey. Although Feeney has a certification and is not a board-certified pet behaviorist, she has traveled across state lines to help pet families in need.

The $425 process starts with a family filling out a nine-page questionnaire detailing everything from how much exercise the pet gets to what the first weeks of its life were like. “It’s all critical information,” Feeney said.

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Then, she visits the family’s home to observe the pet's behavior.

“There are things you can’t see in an exam room,” Feeney said. “For instance, one of my cases was when one dog would get aggressive when the other dogs were trying to eat. If I hadn’t gone to their house, I wouldn’t have realized that the food was by the entranceway and this dog was very possessive of space, so we moved the food away from doorways.”

After the visit, Feeney sends pet parents a behavior report with suggested next steps. “For most problems, there are 10 solutions,” she said. One of those actions often includes hiring a pet trainer.

“Most people have no clue have to train a dog besides teaching them to ‘sit,’ and they give them a treat and they get lucky,” Feeney said. “But if we’re doing something like reactivity, where a dog can’t walk because they react so strongly to other dogs or strangers, there isn’t an owner who can train their dog by themselves.”

Another one of those steps often includes prescribing temporary anxiety medication for the pet. This isn’t a favorite of owners – which Feeney sees as indicative of the way Americans view mental health as a whole – but it can make a world of difference.

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“By the time people are coming to me, we need to decrease the anxiety in these pets so they can learn their new circumstances,” Feeney said. “Most people don’t want to give their pets drugs, but if your pet had diabetes, you would give him insulin, right? If your pet has severe anxiety that’s making him unable to concentrate, why would you not want to give him a drug to make him healthy?”

The process includes three months of follow-up via email and phone calls. In the two years that Feeney has been a pet behaviorist, not one pet has needed a second home visit from Feeney for the same problem.

However, Feeney said, 75% of the dogs she sees likely wouldn’t even need the help of a pet behaviorist if they received enough exercise and mental enrichment – especially if they’re working dog breeds.

“We spent centuries breeding dogs to work, hunt and herd and then we buy them, put them in our houses alone for eight hours, take them for a 20-minute walk twice a day and expect them to be happy,” Feeney said. “And they can’t – they weren’t bred to be. We didn’t make them to be.”

Feeney said dogs, especially working dog breeds, need several hours of exercise everyday – which doesn’t include just going out in the yard on their own. It includes running, chasing a ball, playing, or even going on a doggy treadmill.

If dog owners can’t do that, Feeney said, they should take their dogs to doggy day care or hire a dog walker to walk them multiple times per day.

Dog owners have plenty of enrichment options. Agility, scent work, and even herding classes are available for dogs. They can also spend a half-hour just throwing pieces of food down the hallway, so even a meal can be made mentally stimulating for a pet. There are also toys for both dogs and cats to lengthen and enrich pet meal delivery.

“Dogs spend hours – most of their time – hunting and eating in the wild, and our dogs spend five minutes eating,” Feeney said. “You have to make their lives fun. Their lives are boring, and that’s sad. That’s not what they’re made for.”

Info: betterbondbehavior.wordpress.com; 908-698-4221, buildabetterbondbehavior@gmail.com.

Contact: JIntersimone@MyCentralJersey.com

Jenna Intersimone has been a staff member at the USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey since 2014, although she's a lifetime Jersey girl who considers herself an expert in everything from the Jersey Shore to the Garden State's buzzing downtowns. To get unlimited access to her stories about food, drink and fun, please subscribe or activate your digital account today. You can also follow her on Instagram at @seejennaeat and on Twitter at @JIntersimone.

This article originally appeared on MyCentralJersey.com: Meet Central Jersey's Cesar Milan: This vet can help your pet behave