A saintly voice goes forth, and the barking stops

A love for animals inspired Penny Tai to become an animal behaviorist. [Photo provided to China Daily]

For genuine behavioral problems such as separation anxiety, pet owners should turn to scientific knowledge to understand why and how such problems occur, Tai says, and how to deal with them, instead of simply resorting to scolding and punishment, which often only makes matters worse.

"A pet is like a young child, and you cannot scold it to change it toward what you expect. Instead, you need to use incentives-based training."

Tai, 50, says his love of animals reflects a childhood in which he suffered from losing two pet dogs. One died because a doctor misdiagnosed what was wrong with it, and he resolved to become a veterinarian to cure and save pets suffering from disease.

He fulfilled that dream, graduating in veterinarian medicine at National Chung Tsing University in Taichung, and opened his veterinary practice 24 years ago.

He built a solid reputation with his work, during which many pet owners sought his help regarding disturbing behavior their pets displayed, he says, but he increasingly felt that he lacked the knowledge to understand what lay behind it.

He read everything he could find to increase his understanding, he says, but at the time there was little literature on animal psychology available in Taiwan. His curiosity grew when he commanded one of his dogs, a giant schnauzer, to smile, and almost instantly it would seem to do exactly that.

"I knew a dog could not smile, but I didn't know why it put on such a look when I said the word."

He then applied to do a two-year course at the Animal Behavior Center of New York, and it was there that the window on a new world opened to him thanks to the center's director, Robert Defranco, a pioneer in animal emotions research.

Mostly using quantitative research methods, Tai designed and carried out experiments and collected data for analysis in an effort to determine what goes on in an animal's brain when it is behaving in a particular way.