Two dogs lunge and bark at another dog on a walk. They look the same from across the street. But one dog is afraid and wants the other to go away, while the other is frustrated because they want to say hello and the leash is holding them back. A third dog may simply be repeating a habit, and a fourth may be in pain. Same behavior, four different emotions, and four different plans. This is the heart of the psychobiological approach to animal behavior: before we try to change what an animal does, we need to understand why they are doing it.
Behavior is evidence, not a diagnosis
Aggression is a good example. It is not a diagnosis or a personality trait. It is a set of behaviors, such as staring, stiffening, growling, snarling, snapping, and biting, that animals use to communicate, usually to say “stop” or “back off.” Calling an animal aggressive tells us nothing about why they are communicating that way.
For many years, people described behavior with labels such as “aggressive,” “reactive,” “dominant,” “stubborn,” “spiteful,” or “anxious.” These words describe what a person sees or how a person feels about the behavior, but they don’t tell us what the animal is feeling or trying to accomplish. Two cats who both urinate outside the litter box may have completely different reasons: one may have a painful bladder, one may dislike the litter, and one may be afraid of another cat who guards the hallway.
Professor Daniel Mills, a veterinary behavioral medicine specialist at the University of Lincoln in England, has spent more than 30 years developing what he calls the psychobiological approach. The idea is simple but powerful. Behavior is evidence that something is going on inside the animal. Our job is to work out what that something is, and then treat the cause, not just the behavior.
The core emotional systems
Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp spent his career studying the brain systems that create emotions in mammals. He identified seven core emotional systems deep in the brain that are shared by all mammals, including people, dogs, cats, horses, rabbits, and rats. These systems are ancient, and they exist because they helped animals survive. Panksepp capitalized their names to show he meant specific brain systems, not everyday words.
- SEEKING. The drive to explore, search, forage, and investigate. SEEKING creates interest, curiosity, and eager anticipation. A dog sniffing a trail, a cat stalking a toy, and a horse grazing in a pasture all use this system. SEEKING feels good, and it helps counter fear and frustration.
- FEAR. The system that prepares an animal to escape, hide, freeze, or defend themselves when their safety is threatened.
- RAGE. Despite the name, this system includes everyday frustration and irritation. It activates when an animal is held back, blocked from something they want, or doesn’t get what they expected.
- LUST. The system behind sexual and reproductive behavior.
- CARE. The system that drives nurturing, such as a mother caring for her young, and supports social bonds.
- PANIC/GRIEF. The distress an animal feels when separated from their bonded partners. Panksepp later named this system PANIC/GRIEF to reflect the painful feeling of loss and separation.
- PLAY. The joyful, rough-and-tumble social play seen in puppies, kittens, foals, and even rats, who make high-pitched sounds while playing that researchers compare to laughter.
Some of these systems feel good, such as SEEKING, CARE, and PLAY. Others feel unpleasant, such as FEAR, RAGE, and PANIC/GRIEF. Unpleasant emotions don’t mean an animal is misbehaving. They are normal and useful signals that something in the animal’s world needs to change.
Veterinary behavior specialists such as Dr. Sarah Heath in the United Kingdom use a similar emotional framework in practice, and they add pain as an important factor, because pain affects every emotional system.
The psychobiological approach
Professor Mills describes a structured way to look at any behavior, sometimes called the CME framework.
- Context. Where, when, and around whom does the behavior happen? What happens just before and just after?
- Motivation. What is the animal trying to achieve? To make something go away, get closer to something, get attention, escape, or keep a resource?
- Emotion. What is the animal feeling while they do it? Fear, frustration, pain, desire, or something else? And how automatic has the behavior become?
The answers are treated as a working hypothesis, not a final label. As the plan moves forward, the animal’s response either supports the hypothesis or tells us to look again. This is the same kind of reasoning veterinarians use for any medical condition.
When behavior becomes a habit
When an animal repeats a behavior many times, and it keeps working, the behavior can become a habit with a life of its own. A dog that has lunged at every passing dog for two years may lunge even on a day when they aren’t very worried. Habits need a plan: prevent rehearsal, build a new, more useful habit, and make the old behavior unnecessary.
Do not forget pain
Pain is one of the most common hidden causes of behavior changes in dogs and cats. Pain makes animals more irritable and more likely to feel afraid, and it can make them guard their body, avoid being touched, or stop using a litter box. Read more about hidden pain in dogs and arthritis in cats.
Fear and frustration: why the difference matters
Fear and frustration can look almost identical, but they feel very different to the animal and require different plans.
Fear happens when an animal feels their safety is threatened. A fearful animal usually wants to increase the distance between themselves and the scary thing. You may see a lowered body, ears back, tucked tail, looking away, trying to leave, freezing, or growling, barking, or lunging to make the scary thing go away. For fearful animals, medication can be an important part of the plan, along with management that keeps them out of scary situations and training that changes how they feel about the trigger.
Frustration happens when an animal wants something but can’t have it, or when something they expected doesn’t happen. A frustrated animal usually wants to get closer, not farther away. You may see a forward, upright body, pulling toward the trigger, high-pitched barking or whining, and redirected behaviors such as grabbing the leash or the handler. Frustrated animals often need to learn new ways to get what they want, and to cope when the answer is “not right now.” For frustrated dogs, medication may not help; operant counterconditioning, teaching a new behavior that earns the reward, may be the answer. Learn more in our article on leash reactivity in dogs.
Many animals feel both at different times, or even at the same moment, which is why a careful assessment matters.
Building positive emotions
The psychobiological approach is not only about reducing fear and frustration. It also gives animals more chances to feel good. The pleasant emotional systems, especially SEEKING and PLAY, are powerful tools.
- Sniffing and foraging. Sniff walks, scatter feeding, food puzzles, and Scatter Stations engage the SEEKING system.
- Play. Regular play with toys and appropriate play with people or familiar animals build positive emotions and strong bonds.
- Choice. Letting animals decide whether to approach, leave, or take a break gives them control over their world. Behavior analyst Dr. Israel Goldiamond called these options degrees of freedom: the more good options an animal has, the more control they have. Read more in the Five Domains of animal welfare.
- Predictability. Pattern games and consistent routines help animals know what is coming, which makes the world feel safer.
ACE Free Work and pattern games
Two tools work especially well together to lower fear and frustration and prepare an animal for behavior modification.
Sarah Fisher of Animal Centered Education developed ACE Free Work. The caregiver sets out a simple arrangement of items in a quiet, familiar space: different surfaces to walk on, such as a mat, a low platform, or a piece of carpet; small amounts of food in bowls, snuffle mats, or scattered on the ground; water; and a few interesting objects or scents. The dog can then explore at their own pace, on a long, loose line or off leash in a safe area. There are no cues, no luring, and no right or wrong answers. The caregiver simply watches.
Free work engages the SEEKING system, gives the dog many degrees of freedom, and lets them decide what to explore, what to avoid, and when to take a break. Sniffing and foraging help lower arousal, and many dogs become noticeably more relaxed and settled during and after a session. Free work also lets the caregiver see a great deal: how the dog moves, which surfaces they choose or avoid, where they carry tension, and how they cope with something new. Changes in movement or a reluctance to step on certain surfaces can be an early sign of pain worth discussing with your veterinarian.
Pattern games, developed by Leslie McDevitt, add predictability. Simple, repeated games, such as counting treats out loud or Up-Down, tell the animal exactly what will happen next. Predictability helps fearful animals feel safe and helps frustrated animals know the reward is coming.
Used together, free work and pattern games help an animal feel safe, engaged, and in control before training begins. Free work helps lower stress and shows you how your pet is feeling that day. Pattern games give your pet a familiar, predictable job they can rely on when a trigger appears. A less afraid, less frustrated animal can learn, and that is when behavior modification works best.
What you can do at home
- Describe, do not label. Write down exactly what your pet does, such as “barks and lunges at dogs across the street,” instead of “is aggressive.”
- Note the context. Keep a simple log of where and when the behavior happens, what happened just before, and what happened right after.
- Ask what your pet wants. Do they want something to go away, or do they want to get closer?
- Watch body language. Your pet’s posture, ears, tail, and face tell you a great deal about how they are feeling.
- Start with your veterinarian. Ask about pain and other medical conditions that can affect behavior.
- Get the right help. A board-certified veterinary behaviorist is trained to assess the emotions behind behavior and to build a plan that may include training, management, and medication. See the Get help page for options.
Understanding the emotion behind a behavior changes everything. When we know whether an animal is afraid, frustrated, in pain, or stuck in a habit, we can stop guessing, choose the right plan, and help the animal feel better, not just behave differently.
Sources: Panksepp J. Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions. Oxford University Press; 1998. Panksepp J. Affective consciousness: core emotional feelings in animals and humans. Consciousness and Cognition. 2005;14(1):30-80. Panksepp J, Biven L. The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions. W. W. Norton; 2012. Mills DS. Perspectives on assessing the emotional behavior of animals with behavior problems. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. 2017;16:66-72. Heath S. Understanding feline emotions: … and their role in problem behaviours. Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery. 2018;20(5):437-444. Goldiamond I. Toward a constructional approach to social problems: ethical and constitutional issues raised by applied behavior analysis. Behaviorism. 1974;2(1):1-84. Mills DS, Demontigny-Bédard I, Gruen M, et al. Pain and problem behavior in cats and dogs. Animals. 2020;10(2):318. Further reading: Mills D. The psychobiological approach: a quiet revolution in clinical animal behaviour.