Behaviour problems in companion animals are frequently welfare signals indicating unmet needs, fear, pain, or cognitive dysfunction, requiring welfare-informed assessment rather than purely behavioural correction.
Behaviour problem welfare assessment requires understanding each problem as a communication — the animal expressing that something is wrong in its environment, health, or social context. Aggression may reflect pain; house soiling may reflect anxiety or urinary disease; destructiveness may reflect boredom or separation distress. Purely corrective approaches that attempt to suppress the behaviour without addressing the underlying cause fail to improve welfare and often worsen the behaviour. Welfare-informed assessment investigates pain, fear, unmet needs, and cognitive dysfunction as potential drivers of every presenting behaviour problem.