Elin Lindell

Hi!

In 2011, I got my first dog — little Whiskey (you can see more of him below). That’s when I became interested in learning theory, dog training, and how behaviour works.

As I learned more about behaviour, I also started noticing that many of the dogs and cats coming to my clinic were showing signs of fear and anxiety.

I became interested in finding ways to make veterinary visits more pleasant and less stressful for everyone involved — the animal, the owner, and myself and my colleagues. That also led me to explore care training or handling training with my then-dog, Whiskey.

Since then, I’ve become increasingly involved in behavioural medicine. In recent years (since around 2019), I have worked almost exclusively with behavioural medicine and internal medicine. I work at Albano Animal Hospital in northern Stockholm (from 2025 focusing only on internal medicine), and I also run a small business - Veterinär Enhörningen ("Veterinarian the Unicorn"), through which I occaionally do consulting work.

If you’re interested in examples of what care/handling training can look like, here’s a video showing Whiskey using an inhaler for corticosteroid treatment (the link also includes background information and setup):
https://youtu.be/42mY0sZw-Bk?si=EjPj7cvmqzpL8rER

And here’s my current dog Salma practising taking a pill: https://youtu.be/9IGhKqAWGIs?si=8r6I7D0b4sH6Szgw

Our project is called "Better compliance and health with low stress handling of dogs".

In this project, we want to find out whether training dogs for husbandry behaviours (specifically toothbrushing and ear care) can lower their stress levels.

We will also study how education and hands-on training for dog owners affect the ability of  brushing their dog's teeth.

To do this, we plan to:

• Develop a Swedish-language tool to help assess a dog's stress level in the clinic and during training. (A "map" of body language: you compare your dog with the pictures in the tool to judge whether the dog is stressed, and if so, how severely.)

• Develop Swedish-language training protocols that give dog owners and animal health staff the skills they need to train dogs for toothbrushing and/or ear care.

The project is funded by Stiftelsen Djursjukvård i Stor-Stockholm (the Foundation for Veterinary Care in Greater Stockholm).

A big THANK YOU to my supervisors and to the foundation for making it possible for me to work on this!

• 2025 and 2026: 5-day workshop in animal training and behaviour analysis with Chirag Patel in Denmark, organised by NordicABC https://www.nordicabc.com/

• 2024–2025: Course with Eva Bertilsson, "Deep dive into behaviour analysis for animal trainers" https://evabertilsson.com/

• 2022: 10-month distance course in behavioural medicine (Behavioural Medicine Distance Education, University of Sydney) https://cve.edu.au/Web/Continuing_Education/Registration/Event_Display.aspx?EventKey=25BMED

• 2019: Completed a 1-year clicker instructor programme at Canis Hundeskole https://canishundeskole.no/kurs/canis-klikkerinstruktor-2024/

• 2017–present: Trained and certified in Fear Free (now Fear Free Elite) https://fearfreepets.com/

• 2007–present: Clinical work with dogs and cats, at both a small clinic and a large animal hospital

• 2007: Degree of Master of Science in Veterinary Medicine (DVM), Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Uppsala

Main supervisor: Lena Olsén, Senior Lecturer, Department of Clinical Sciences (KV), Anaesthesiology https://www.slu.se/cv/lena-olsen/

Co-supervisor: Karolina Brunius Enlund, Lecturer, Department of Clinical Sciences (KV), Small Animal Surgery  https://www.slu.se/cv/karolina-enlund/

Co-supervisor: Katarina Varjonen, licensed veterinarian, Swedish specialist in diseases of dogs and cats, Swedish specialist in dermatology (level 2), and Diplomate of the European College of Veterinary Dermatology (Dipl. ECVD) https://www.anicura.se/hitta-klinik/stockholm/djursjukhuset-albano/vi-som-jobbar-har/veterinarer/katarina-v/

• Video consultations with dog and cat owners, and planned and appeared in information videos for FirstVet together with my dog Whiskey (see examples under links)

• Before FirstVet: answered questions about dogs and cats on the Vetzoo website, and before that on the former website veterinaren.nu

• Have given lectures, taught courses and appeared on podcasts, on behavioural medicine among other topics. Audiences include animal health staff, dog trainers, canine behaviourists and dog clubs (listen to examples under links)

• Mini-series on behaviour published in Svensk Veterinärtidning (the Swedish Veterinary Journal), 2020, starting on page 36: https://www.svenskveterinartidning.se/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/SVT2007.pdf

• Advisor for the app Fluffylog

• Finalist (fourth place), "Veterinarian of the Year" (Årets Veterinär), 2020

An app for tracking behaviour, itching, gut health and more in your dog:

Fluffylog on the App Store. Elin is an advisor for Fluffylog, a new app launched in 2025. Fluffylog is a dog health tracker that makes it easy to collect and visualise data, which helps both dog owners and veterinarians. It is currently only on the App Store and has just launched, so we would be very happy if you download it and leave a review!

Behaviour analysis

Swedish Association for Behavior Analysis (SWABA)  -  is open to EVERYONE, both professionals and those of us who are simply interested in behaviour analysis. It covers both humans and animals. (Membership is only SEK 150 per year, the people are lovely and the education is high quality!)

SWABA's excellent Facebook interest group for animals: SWABAdjur (free):  https://www.facebook.com/groups/SWABAdjur/

Read about what behaviour analysis is here (in Swedish):  https://www.swaba.se/beteendeanalys/

Eva Bertilsson

Who do you call when the giraffe needs eye drops but doesn't want them? Sweden's rock star of animal training, of course: Eva Bertilsson.

Eva is providing education and resources both in Swedish and English.