Aggression is not a diagnosis for your veterinary patients.

Aggression is not a diagnosis for your veterinary patients. According to behavior expert and Fetch dvm360 speaker Dr. John Ciribassi, many clients (and veterinary professionals!) fail to recognize aggression for what it really is—a clinical sign. According to Dr. John Ciribassi, the most common behavior misconceptions he hears from clients and fellow veterinarians is the view that aggression is a diagnosis rather than a sign of an underlying problem. Dr. Ciribassi makes an analogy to vomit—presumably so you can get a nice mental picture: "You don't say the diagnosis is vomiting. You say the symptom is vomiting. Now we have to find out, why is that occurring? Same with aggression," he says. According to Dr. Ciribassi, thinking of aggression as a clinical sign forces us to dig deeper to determine its causes, such as fear, territoriality or a maternal problem. “Your goal as a practitioner is to diagnose why that symptom is occurring and then address the cause,” he says. This paradigm applies to both dogs and cats, though Dr. Ciribassi says the range of causes of aggression as a clinical sign is wider in dogs than in cats. “But it’s the same idea,” he says. “Cats display aggression for a few different reasons—fear and territoriality are probably the biggest. And then we can see pain as well in both species.”