Respect the language they’re using long before they need a diagnosis.
They aren’t soft. They are early. They are valid. They are the difference between treating disease and preventing suffering.
Here’s where the depth comes in: An anxious, hypervigilant horse might be reacting not to the handler, but to early gastric ulcer pain. A parrot that starts plucking feathers could have low-grade zinc toxicity, not a “bad habit.”
Veterinarians are realizing that "bad behavior" is often undiagnosed pain or illness.