Dr. Ori Stollar

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158 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard May 2025 last heard May 2025

Dr. Ori Stollar’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Training Without Conflict® | Dog Training Podcast · Episode Fifty-Nine: Dr. Orion · 3 May 2025 podcast

Yeah, so first, allow me to thank you for having me on, you know, it's probably going to be a different audience that I usually talk to. And but you know, it's good. It's I think it's good for the exposure that everyone learns on. I don't even want to call it the other side, right? I mean, we all we're all actually all in the same field. So we try to understand each other.

But yes, so as you mentioned, I am a veterinary behavior specialist. We can talk a little bit later on what it actually means and what you need to do to become a behavior specialist. But I think like many other people in the field of behavior, either training or the veterinary side of things, It usually starts with one of your own pets, right?

So I had a dog that actually, because of medical issues, also basically led me into veterinary to begin with. And, you know, it was like one thing led to another. Because of her behavior issues, I started... learning a lot about behavior. I started with kind of what everyone does, YouTube, TV, a lot of Cesar Millan and all of that.

But the older that I got, I also learned that there's an actually field in veterinary medicine, kind of like in human medicine, right? We have psychiatry in human medicine, so we have the veterinary behavior field. in veterinary medicine. And because of all the behavior problems that my dog had, I got into the field after many years. And yeah, that's where I am nowadays.

So as far as I know, and I can, you know, I can definitely speak for myself and speak for colleagues that I'm much more familiar with. I don't know every single Veterinary Behaviorist out there or more specifically Behavior Specialist, Veterinary Behavior Specialist, and maybe we should make this distinction between the terminology. Yes, please. Because I do think it's important.

A veterinary behaviorist is kind of like a more, or a behaviorist in general, right? It's a more general definition. I know that some will use that terminology for people with a PhD and not necessarily veterinarians, even if their PhD was about veterinary or animal behavior, but they're not veterinarians.

I think many years ago, the late Dr. Sophia Yin said that a behaviorist is either a diplomat of something like the American College of Veterinary Behavior, so a specialist. There's also a European and an Australian college. There are different colleges around the world. or is someone that is kind of like a PhD in the field.

But everyone technically, as far as I know, legally can say that they're a behaviorist. Even a dog trainer can say that he is a behaviorist.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, because, you know, we all do behavior.

So we can say we're behaviorists. Yeah, no problem. Behavior specialists, or sorry, specifically veterinary behavior specialists, the only people that can use that term And it's a law, right? I mean, it's something that if someone is calling himself a veterinary behavior specialist and he's not, he's actually doing something against the law.

Those are only people that did a residency, studied and treated dogs for usually a minimum of three years and a minimum of something like 400 dogs that they treated. And of course, submitted, published a paper, a scientific paper, and case reports and pass the very long and hard test and only they are allowed to call themselves veterinary behaviorist.

Doesn't, I'm not saying that, you know, PhDs are worse than veterinary specialists, but it's important to know that the terminology is very different. Yeah, I mean, for sure.

I think that's probably the most demanding and the most, let's say, that there's actually a legal, in a way, a legal definition for it than anything else.

Yeah, and there are studies about that as well. But some schools, sadly, even nowadays, that we know how important behavior is for everything, for the well-being. We know that dogs with behavior issues are... very likely to be surrendered to shelters and euthanized, right? Sadly, some schools still don't have any behavior lectures or courses, and it is getting better and better.

But let's say that when I was event student many years ago, we only and I think that that's still kind of the norm. There's only one course, in most cases, like one semester, it teaches the basics and basics. Usually, you know, like learning theories, right does go like quick and dirty about the medications and stuff like that.

But But yes, it is true that most veterinarians don't have a broad enough understanding of veterinary medicine.

A lot of them are afraid just because of how complex it is. And actually, I'll go back to your original question about behavior specialists and dog trainers. most or all of the behavior specialists that I know, including me, usually work with a trainer.

Usually it's either, for example, I think that most of my referrals actually come from dog trainers, not from other veterinarians, but actually from dog trainers. And even if they do come to me from another veterinarian, in Probably 90% of the cases, I will actually tell them that they should reach out to a dog trainer.

And not because I don't think that I know how to train dogs and, you know, because I did learn it. But I just... you know, the time that needs to be spent with a trainer and the way that trainers actually work with the owner one on one and with, of course, the pet is very much different to the way that most of us specialist work, right?

Because we mainly do a consultation, it's more like sitting with a psychiatrist in a room and talking, and then you know, seeing how the dog behaves and all that. It's late, and then we do give recommendations, right, but they're usually in some, depending on the case, of course, but many times they might be too broad, and you still want them to go to the trainer.

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