Author: Dr. Patrick Melese, DVM, MA, DACVB

Dr. Melese is a diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists and director of VETERINARY BEHAVIOR CONSULTANTS, a veterinary practice dedicated to preventing and solving behavior problems in animals since 1988. Until 2003 Dr. Melese was on the faculty of the University of California School of Veterinary Medicine where he started and ran a satellite animal behavior service in the North County San Diego area. He was also concurrently appointed as a lecturer in Animal Behavior at U.C. Davis and in that capacity supervised and mentored residents in Clinical Behavior, helped teach veterinary students and perform clinical research. Since then, Dr. Melese has reactivated his San Diego based private behavioral specialty practice in San Diego where he continues to see clients and their pets with behavior problems, teaches senior veterinary students from all over the US and international schools rotating through his specialty service and provides local and national continuing education for veterinarians and others. Dr. Melese's training includes a B.S. and a Master’s degree from the Department of Zoology at the University of California, Davis in 1980 where his subjects were Animal Behavior and Neuroscience. Afterwards, Dr. Melese worked with Professor Benjamin Hart, D.V.M., PhD. doing behavioral research and publishing several papers in physiological psychology at the U.C. Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. He continued to work with Dr. Hart through veterinary school and assisted with the Veterinary Teaching Hospital Behavior Service until graduating in 1986. Over the years, Dr. Melese has been featured on numerous television news segments and special reports on the local, regional and national stations (Networks, PBS Television, etc.) in the San Diego Union/Tribune, several regional newspapers in California and other states and on several radio talk shows. He has even been featured on international programs shown in Japan and Korea.