Dr. Elena Vance didn’t reach for her stethoscope when she entered the exam room. Instead, she sat on the floor. Across from her was Barnaby, a three-year-old Golden Retriever whose owners described him as "suddenly aggressive" during vet visits.

For decades, veterinary medicine focused primarily on the physical ailments of animals. A broken bone, a viral infection, or a parasitic outbreak was diagnosed and treated using strictly biomedical tools. However, modern veterinary medicine recognizes that a physical body cannot be fully healed or understood without looking at the mind.

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Rather than moving toward him, Elena placed a single treat three feet away. This was the first lesson in applied ethology