For veterinary professionals
For behaviour cases that have declined referral, vet-to-vet consulting keeps the case in your clinic, under your care, with experienced work-up, treatment, support and advice.
You know the case. The dog has bitten someone in the house, or the cat has been urinating on the bed for 8 months, and the owner has already said no to being sent anywhere else. Referral is not on the table, but doing nothing is not an answer either.
The short version
Dr Chantelle "Channy" McGowan (they/them) has been a registered veterinarian since 2011 and gained MANZCVS in the Veterinary Behaviour Chapter in 2023.
The bind
Owners decline behaviour referral for reasons that have nothing to do with how much they love the animal. Cost, distance, waiting lists, a bad experience with a trainer, or a straightforward reluctance to start again with somebody new. Some of them also hear a referral as a verdict on you.
So the case stays with you, and it stays hard. The consult runs long, the notes get thin because there is no good structure to write into, and the next revisit lands on whichever vet is rostered. Meanwhile the risk in the household does not pause.
Vet-to-vet consulting resolves that without moving the client anywhere. You get the behaviour work-up, the medication reasoning and the written plan. Your client keeps their vet, which is you.
When to call
These are the presentations that most often arrive on a Friday afternoon with no clear next step in the record.
A bite in the home, a dog guarding a person or a resource, or a family asking whether the animal is safe to keep. You need a risk framework, a management plan the household will actually follow, and a clinical record that holds up if the situation escalates later.
Escalating fear at the clinic, sedation now needed for a nail trim, or a dog that has started to lunge at your nurses. The medical problem is real and untreated because nobody can get near the animal.
You have tried 2 agents, seen a partial response, and there is no clear next move. Dose ceiling, washout, combination, augmentation, or the possibility that the behaviour plan underneath the medication was never workable for that household.
Urinalysis unremarkable, imaging unremarkable, and the cat is still going outside the tray. The answer is usually in resource distribution, social tension between cats, or substrate history, and it takes a structured intake to find.
Owners who are back in the office 5 days a week and cannot do a graduated absence protocol as written. The plan has to be built for the life they actually have or it will not be followed.
One of the hardest conversations in general practice. A second opinion before you support or resist that decision protects the owner, the animal and you.
How it runs
No portal to learn, no case-management platform to sign up to. History across, call booked, plan back in writing.
Case discussion runs by video or phone, whichever suits your day. Fees are quoted per case once we have seen the history, because a single medication question and a multi-animal aggression case are not the same piece of work. Consultation pricing for direct client work is published on the pricing section of the main site.
Full clinical history, signalment, current and previous medications with doses and duration, bloods and any imaging, and the owner's own description in their words. Video of the behaviour in context is worth more than any paragraph, and most owners already have some on their phone.
A booked video call with no client in the room, so we can be blunt about what is going on, what the household will realistically do, and where the case is likely to stall. You get to ask the questions you would not ask in front of an owner.
A working diagnosis and differentials, a medication plan with doses and monitoring, a behaviour modification plan written in language you can hand straight to the owner, safety and management steps, and clear criteria for when to escalate.
You remain the treating vet. Prescribing, records, invoicing and the client relationship all stay with your practice. We agree a review point up front so the case does not quietly drift once the initial plan is issued.
The trade
The professional anxiety about outside involvement in a case is legitimate. Here is exactly where the line sits.
Scope
This is peer support, not referral, and it does not replace referral where referral is what the patient needs. Membership of the Australian and New Zealand College of Veterinary Scientists is earned by examination, but the ANZCVS states plainly that it is not a specialist qualification. Pretending otherwise would help nobody in a difficult case. Australia has only a handful of registered veterinary behaviour specialists. Where a case needs one, you will be told so directly.
It is also not an emergency service and not a guarantee. Behaviour medicine deals in probability, household capacity and slow gains. Any promise to fix a dog is bull-dust, and a plan built on one would fall apart on you in front of your own client.
What you can rely on is a considered work-up, a documented rationale for each decision, and a straight answer when the honest answer is that the outlook is poor.
Practical questions
No. Vet-to-vet consulting is advice to you, not a consultation with your client. You remain the treating veterinarian, you prescribe, you keep the record, and you invoice. Your client does not need to meet us at all, which is precisely the point when they have already declined a referral.
Then a direct behaviour consultation is usually the better use of everyone's time, and we are glad to take the referral. In-person behaviour consults run across Adelaide and Melbourne, and telehealth consults are available Australia-wide. We write back to you either way.
Vet-to-vet case discussion is not limited by geography, because the patient stays under your care and you remain the treating vet. Where the animal itself needs to be seen, in-person behaviour consults cover Adelaide and Melbourne, and telehealth covers the rest of the country.
The full clinical record rather than a summary, current and past medications with doses and duration, recent pathology, and any video the owner has of the behaviour happening in context. A short note on the household matters as much as the clinical file: who lives there, what their week looks like, and what they have already tried and abandoned.
We will say so. Australia has only a handful of registered veterinary behaviour specialists, and where a case needs one, the useful thing we can do is tell you that plainly and point you to the right person rather than keep the case moving sideways.
Nobody can promise that, and anyone who does is selling bull-dust. Behaviour medicine works in reduction of frequency, intensity and duration, and in what a household can sustain over months. What this does give you is a defensible plan, a clear rationale for every decision in it, and someone to call when it stalls.
Also for practices
The other 2 ways we work with the profession rather than with pet owners.
Lunch-and-learns and webinar sessions in low-stress handling, built around your practice, your rooms and your caseload.
Conference sessions, caregiver information evenings, expo appearances, interviews and written commentary for the public and the profession.
Send a short outline of the patient, what has been tried, and what the owner has ruled out. If it is a case where this helps, we will say so. If it is not, we will tell you that too and point you somewhere more useful.
