Behavioral Wellness Assessment Acknowledgment

Effective Date: August 25, 2026 Last Updated: August 25, 2026

The Behavioral Wellness Assessment is designed to provide meaningful professional insight into your dog as an individual—including behavioral patterns, history, environment, relationships, lifestyle, and other factors that may help create a more complete picture of what may be influencing behavior and wellbeing.

Please read the following before beginning your assessment.

The Assessment Is Based on the Information You Provide

The Behavioral Wellness Assessment is conducted primarily through the information you share.

Unless expressly stated otherwise, Kimberly Artley has not directly observed your dog in person, your home or environment, your dog's interactions with people or other animals, or the circumstances in which the behaviors you describe have occurred.

The insight provided through the Assessment is therefore based upon the information available at the time, including your responses, descriptions, history, and any other materials you may provide.

The more complete and accurate the picture you provide, the more meaningful and relevant the resulting insight can be.

Your Observations Matter

You know your dog's daily life in ways that cannot be captured through a single interaction or observation.

At the same time, every person's description of behavior is necessarily informed by what they have observed, understood, remembered, and interpreted.

Relevant details may sometimes be unknown, forgotten, misunderstood, or unintentionally omitted.

For this reason, the Assessment should be understood as professional behavioral insight derived from the information provided—not as a direct observation or absolute determination of who your dog is or why a particular behavior occurs.

Please Share the Full Picture

Please answer assessment questions as completely and accurately as you reasonably can.

This is especially important when providing information about:

• bite or attempted-bite history;
• aggression or threatening behavior;
• conflict with other animals;
• resource guarding;
• escape or elopement behavior;
• significant behavioral changes;
• previous training or behavioral interventions;
• changes in the home or environment;
• relevant physical-health changes;
• medications or other interventions that may affect behavior; and
• other significant incidents or circumstances.

Sharing behavioral history does not make your dog “bad,” and disclosure of difficult behavior is not a judgment of you or your dog.

It provides important context.

Kimberly Artley cannot account for information that was not provided or reasonably available when the Assessment was prepared.

Behavior Is Dynamic and Contextual

Behavior is information.

It is influenced by many interacting factors and may change across environments, relationships, situations, experiences, physical states, and points in time.

A dog may behave differently with different people, around different animals, in different environments, or under different levels of stress or arousal.

For that reason, the Behavioral Wellness Assessment is intended to provide insight, context, and greater understanding based upon the information available—not certainty about an inherently dynamic living being.

No behavioral assessment can predict a dog's future behavior with certainty.

Behavioral Insight, Not a Guarantee

The Assessment may identify patterns, relationships, contributing factors, areas for consideration, or opportunities for change.

It does not guarantee a particular behavioral outcome or guarantee that a dog will or will not behave in a particular way in the future.

Living with, handling, training, and interacting with animals involves inherent and sometimes unpredictable risk.

A behavioral assessment, training program, management strategy, or professional recommendation cannot guarantee that a dog will never bite, fight, escape, injure a person or animal, damage property, or otherwise behave unexpectedly.

Your Responsibility

You remain responsible for your dog's supervision, management, handling, containment, care, and safety.

You are also responsible for determining whether and how to implement information or recommendations provided through the Assessment within your individual circumstances.

If you believe a recommendation cannot be implemented safely, do not implement it. Situations involving significant aggression, biting, fighting, predatory behavior, escape behavior, or other safety concerns may warrant additional direct professional support or other appropriate intervention.

Nutrition, Physical Wellbeing and Behavior

Behavior does not exist independently of the body or environment.

For that reason, the Assessment may consider information about nutrition, exercise, sleep, physical wellbeing, medications, environment, lifestyle, and other factors that may influence behavior.

Any discussion of these subjects is provided within the context of canine behavior and behavioral wellness education.

The Behavioral Wellness Assessment does not provide veterinary diagnosis or veterinary medical treatment and is not a substitute for appropriate veterinary care.

When a physical or medical concern may be relevant to behavior, veterinary evaluation may be recommended.

A Living Picture

The Behavioral Wellness Assessment reflects the information and circumstances available at the time it is prepared.

Dogs change. Environments change. Relationships change. Health and life circumstances change.

New information or significant changes may affect the relevance of previous observations or recommendations.

The Assessment should therefore be understood as a thoughtful professional interpretation of the picture available at that point in time—not a permanent label placed upon your dog.

Your Acknowledgment

By proceeding with the Behavioral Wellness Assessment, you acknowledge that:

• the Assessment is based primarily upon information you provide and is generally conducted without direct, in-person observation of your dog;
• you are responsible for providing information that is complete and accurate to the best of your knowledge;
• behavioral insight and recommendations are necessarily limited by the information available;
• animal behavior is dynamic, contextual, and cannot be predicted with certainty;
• no specific behavioral outcome or result is guaranteed;
• you remain responsible for the supervision, management, handling, care, and safety of your dog and for decisions concerning implementation of information or recommendations; and
• the Assessment provides behavioral and educational insight and does not replace appropriate veterinary care when medical evaluation or treatment is needed.